


Quod Erat Faciendium

by KtwoNtwo



Series: 2.5 Holmes' [2]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers, James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond - All Media Types, Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: AU for S3, Canon-Typical Violence, Captivity, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Past Abuse, Post-Reichenbach, Post-Skyfall, Q is a Holmes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-12
Updated: 2014-01-11
Packaged: 2018-01-01 07:57:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 32,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1042311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KtwoNtwo/pseuds/KtwoNtwo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Q has not always been Q nor has he always been on the side of the angels.  When Q’s past comes back to haunt him it’s up to his older half-brother, Sherlock Homes, to orchestrate a rescue.  A sequel to Brothers Three from the alternating viewpoints of both Q and John Watson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Rated M mostly for dark themes. Violence, nonconsensual drug use, captivity and nonspecific references to past abuse especially in chapters with latin names. If you have triggers for same you might want to avoid.
> 
> Cross posted from ff.net. 
> 
> Standard Disclaimer: I claim no rights. I make no profit.

Precognition is not my strong suit but I knew in my bones that something was afoot. Something big and dangerous. Even my fae friends with the gift couldn't seem to get more than a vague premonition that something bad was going to happen very soon to one of those I cared for. I did everything I could. I checked on my people especially those important to the health and security of the nation. I took a look at the contingency and succession plans in place. Finally I left a warning with the one member of the government whom I knew wouldn't ignore it. Unfortunately my warning was not specific enough and came too late to avert what happened. I've rarely felt so helpless, rarely been in a position where I was unable to act to protect my own. Now all I can do is watch and wait and see if the other two can extricate the first from his predicament.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you unfamiliar, this POV is that of Arthur Kirkland (England - APH).


	2. Client

When I came down to breakfast that morning I immediately realized that my flat mate, Sherlock Holmes, was mere hours away from that dangerous state he labeled boredom. A bored Sherlock is not something that anyone in his right mind needs to deal with. It's a good thing that I have been accused of not being in my right mind.

The great consulting detective was sprawled on the sofa ostensibly reading an article in some scientific journal. I could tell, however, from his posture and the twitching of his bare feet that it wasn't really doing anything to distract him. He was still in the clothes I had seen him in last night. Hmm. I'd need to come up with something relatively quickly then. Otherwise he just might take it upon himself to hunt up my Sig and add some new holes in the wall, scribble mathematical formula to determine bullet trajectories on the ceiling or do something even more bizarre and destructive. None of those activities would endear him to Mrs. Hudson our landlady.

"Have you checked the website?" I asked as I made for the kitchen to rustle up breakfast and tea.

"It was the estranged Aunt," He replied without looking up from the article. "Took me five minutes."

"The comments section of my Blog?"

"Nothing."

I decided to make some extra toast. In this mood Sherlock would eat if I put it in front of him. This was in direct contrast to when he was working on a case where I had to bully him into eating and sleeping. "Paper?"

"Mrs. Hudson left it on the landing."

Of course, he couldn't be bothered to bestir himself. He didn't even have to go downstairs thanks to Mrs. Hudson. All he had to do was walk to the door and open it. I plopped the toast on some plates, poured two mugs of tea and hauled the whole mess into the sitting room. "Eat," I said as I set things down on the coffee table. Sherlock dropped his scientific journal on the floor, sat up and reached for the toast while I went and retrieved the paper.

I settled and started to eat while I read. "Bank vault in Surry."

"Inside job. The jewelry was gone by the time the vault was locked. Assistant manager had nicked it the day before," Sherlock was matter of fact around a mouthful of toast. "Inspector Hanna called me about it last night."

I read for a bit more. "Another MP caught with his secretary."

"Mycroft's problem."

Sherlock got up and wandered around restlessly. I was a little surprised that he wasn't more agitated. Before he'd taken his now famous dive off the roof St. Bart's he would have been waiving his hands and yelling at me or frantically texting Lestrade for a case. Playing dead for a year hunting Moriaty's network seemed to have mellowed him. It also seemed to have taught him a bit more patience as well as some better social skills. However, even with the longer lead time he still became a regular terror when his mind did not have anything to feed its voracious analytical engine.

"Taliban spring offensive seems to have started."

"6 to 8 weeks then," Sherlock's voice floated out of the kitchen.

"Scuse me?" I was confused by the apparent non sequitur. What the heck did 6 to 8 weeks have to do with…Oh. The northern Afghan drug lords shipped their product out via Pakistan. Once the passes cleared in the spring there was an influx of fighters in one direction and drugs the other. We'd have an increase in drug related crime as the potent opiates hit British soil. "Never mind," I said as Sherlock reappeared from the kitchen with refilled mugs of tea. I stared as he placed mine on the coffee table.

Sherlock never ever did anything that was even remotely domestic unless he absolutely had to. In addition, he rarely did anything for anyone but himself without an ulterior motive of some sort. All part and parcel of the "high functioning sociopath" label he liked to apply to himself. What the heck was he up to? While I was absorbed in the paper he'd ferried the dishes to the sink and made tea not only for himself but also for me. That was completely anomalous behavior and I was just about to say something when the downstairs bell sounded.

"Firm pressure for three seconds," he commented.

"Client," was my response as I heard Mrs. Hudson go to answer the door. I folded the paper and listened carefully. Female voice.

"Go on up dear and just knock," Mrs Hudson advised our unknown caller.

I got up to open the door as Sherlock commented, "5'5", sensible shoes, wearing trousers, works out regularly."

I opened the door just as our erstwhile potential client was about to knock and was stunned at just who was standing in front of me. "Shirley!"

"Yes," she replied in a somewhat districted tone of voice.

I just stared at her for a second before ushering her in and shutting the door. She was Greg Lestrade's girlfriend of about eight months. I had met her once or twice. She had seemed nice enough. Worked for an export firm in their IT department dealing with computer network security among other things from what little she had said. From the serious look on her face I could tell it wasn't a social call.

She walked up to the end of the sofa, set her bag on the coffee table and looked at Sherlock. She didn't sit down or say anything. She stood there just looking at him. He didn't seem to notice the rudeness and just stared back. It dawned on me then that she was waiting. Lestrade had obviously warned her about Sherlock's propensity for blurting out his deductions upon first meetings. I glanced back and forth at each of them and wondered which one would break the silence first.

Sherlock suddenly smiled and looked smug, "So what can I do for MI6 this morning?" he asked her. "Although I will warn you that I will not intercede for you when Lestrade manages to figure it out."

"MI6?" I blurted, surprised.

Shirley glanced at me, nodded slightly then sat down. She reached inside her bag and pulled out a small box. She fiddled with something on its side and a small green light lit on its top.

"Really John," Sherlock said, "It was obvious. Her comment upon entering was not completely addressed to you. So to who was she speaking and how? That led me to look for the earpiece. It's small, compact and wireless. That's expensive and very high tech. Then there is the fact that she's armed with not only a firearm but also with at least one non-lethal weapon, most likely a Tazer of some sort. There's only one agency that routinely outfits their agents with that amount of expensive high tech equipment, ergo MI6." He paused and focused on the box on the table. "That just confirms my deductions as does the fact that your bodyguard has just picked the lock on the front door and is coming up the stairs."

It never fails to amaze me when Sherlock pulls one of his deductions seemingly out of thin air within moments of meeting someone. I hadn't realized that she was armed but I had noticed the box in her purse. I didn't know how Sherlock had figured out the bodyguard and the lock pick. I hadn't even heard the door open. Sherlock narrowed his eyes then. Uh oh, that meant he wasn't done yet.

"From your complexion you are inside a lot. Lines on your face are not, therefore, due to exposure to the elements. You work long hours with computers and its messing with your eyesight. You've told Lestrade you work in IT and that's only half true. You are comfortable with both guns and gadgets, therefore Q branch. You have a bodyguard and arrived in a government vehicle therefore you are one of Q's lieutenants." He paused for a moment. "So why are you here and why didn't I get a text informing me you were coming?" he mused.

I was a bit surprised by that also. It seemed to be genetic trait that Q, Quentin Holmes, shared with his two half siblings Mycroft and Sherlock. As far as any of the three were concerned the best and highest use of a mobile was to send text messages. Previously when MI6 had wanted Sherlock's help it had been preceded by a text and followed by an information dump onto my laptop all courtesy of Q. That left the question as what exactly was so important to warrant a personal visit but was not important enough to bring Quentin around himself?

I had barely finished that thought when the door opened and James Bond stepped into the room. He gave me a nod, Sherlock a glance, and focused on Shirley. "We're secure," was all he said to her before taking up a guard position by the closed door.

The situation was getting stranger by the moment. I'd seen this side of Bond before in Afganistan. This was the deadly 00 agent, ready and able to kill to further his mission and he was making it obvious his mission right now was the protection of Shirley. So just exactly who was she and why did she warrant the protection of one MI6's top agents?

As usual Sherlock beat me to it. "You are R!" he almost shouted sitting bolt upright. His face had drained of color. "What has happened? Tell me!" he ordered.

Shirley closed her eyes and said "Q was kidnapped at approximately 03:00 this morning from inside his apartment building." She opened her eyes and continued, "When he wasn't in contact by 08:30 I tried to ring him. His phone was off. It went straight to voice mail. Computer access was similarly unsuccessful."

"What makes you think he was taken rather than his deliberately going off line?" Sherlock asked.

"The driver dropped him off at 02:47 and watched him get into the lift. His home system never logged into to the main server. He has it programed to do that whenever he is in his flat. His phone went dark at 2:54. CCTV feeds have a white delivery lorry exiting the alley at 03:17. We are currently tracing it." Shirley rattled this information off in a calm, matter of fact tone that was completely at odds with her body language. Her body was tense and her fingers twitched minutely. It was taking considerable will power for her to just sit still. I wasn't sure what she thought she should be doing but there obviously was something.

Sherlock pulled out his phone. He glanced at it as he set it on the table. "So what have you gleaned in an hour and a half?"

"We've pulled all the CCTV feeds in the surrounding area as well as the ones on the lorry's route of travel. We are attempting to hack his phone and activate it remotely. NSY has been notified and they have dispatched an investigative team. They should be on site shortly. They think they are investigating the disappearance of the head of IT for Universal Exports until I can get there to brief them."

Ah. So that was why she was tense. Shirley wanted to kick NSY into high gear as soon as possible. But there was still something off about this whole thing. Why was she here asking for Sherlock's help? Even though it was his brother that appeared to be missing, MI6 was one of the most secretive agencies in the entire British government. They took care of their own. From what little I knew they treated all their activities like a foreign intelligence operation. Everything was compartmentalized with the right hand not knowing what the left hand was doing in case someone was caught. So why was Shirley giving Sherlock this unprecedented amount of information?

Sherlock's thoughts had obviously veered in the same direction as mine had because he asked, "Why do you want me involved at this stage?"

Shirley looked like she'd bit a lemon but it was Bond who answered. "M thought that your involvement would forestall your elder brother's reaction when he finds out."

Oh my. Intergovernmental turf wars. Mycroft was technically in the Home Office. MI6 wanted us to keep MI5 and anyone else Mycroft could mobilize off their backs. Wonderful.

Sherlock snorted and rolled his eyes. "I have no control over him. We barely speak."

"Well I suspect you are going to have to speak with him as soon as I turn that," Shirley indicated the box on the table, "off."

It was Sherlock's turn to look sour. "Go ahead then," he said grumpily.

Shirley did something to the box and the green light faded. Almost instantaneously Sherlock's phone on the table vibrated. A text. It vibrated two more times in quick succession. He looked at it as if it was a snake. My phone vibrated then. I glanced at it.

_Sherlock needs to look at his phone. MH._

That was followed immediately thereafter by, _Tell Sherlock to answer his phone NOW! MH._

Interesting. Mycroft had concluded that Sherlock was indulging in his normal behavior. He didn't seem to have any idea that we'd been under some sort of electronic jamming for the last few minutes. Thank heavens for small favors I thought.

Another text arrived on my phone. _Tell him it involves Quentin. MH._

I looked up. "He knows," was my comment to the room at large. Bond didn't react, Shirley looked resigned and Sherlock merely reached for his phone as it started to ring.

I didn't see him glance at the number but since he answered with "I'm already on it," I assumed it was Mycroft. He listened for a moment then said "No, I'll handle it," followed shortly after by "Yes, I'll keep you informed." He listened a bit more then said in a resigned tone "If you must," and rang off.

I was shocked. That had been the most civil exchange between Sherlock and his brother that I had ever been privileged to witness. Apparently a threat to Quentin was enough to override whatever grudge Sherlock held against Mycroft. It was also enough to get him moving quickly because no sooner had he put down the phone then he was on his feet and heading for his bedroom at speed. On the way out of the room he commented almost off handedly, "Mycroft is sending a car. It should be here in five minutes."

That seemed to be everyone else's, myself included, cue to move. Shirley grabbed the box off the table and stowed it in her handbag. "That will expedite matters," she said then added apparently to someone on her earpiece, "I'll let you know when I'm ready to return to base." Bond had opened the door to the flat and was looking out onto the landing, securing the way for our departure. I headed for my room to put on shoes and grab my Sig Saur. I knew I would likely need it sooner or later and I didn't want to have to come back and get it.

It was almost exactly five minutes later when the four of us, Bond in the lead, exited 221. One of Mycroft's black cars was waiting for us at the curb with Mycroft's PA, Ms. Not-Anthea, was standing beside it dressed in a black trouser outfit her hair up under a cap and her blackberry nowhere in evidence. We all piled into the car, Not-Anthea driving, and were off.


	3. Rapiendus

Consciousness returned to me slowly and it was not a pleasant experience. I was cold. I was lying on my side on the floor of some sort of van or lorry by the sound. Stiff suspension translated every bump of the road up into my aching body. It made it very hard to think but think was what I needed to do if there was any hope of getting out of this alive. As my half-brother Sherlock liked to say Data Quentin, data. Identify and analyze the data. So what exactly did I have for data?

Current situation first. My hands were not tied. They didn't think I'd fight. I couldn't feel my glasses. They'd either tossed them or removed them. Removal would be the preferable option there. That would mean they needed me for something rather than just as a hostage or ransom. I was lying on some sort of pad, no it was a blanket. I tried to crack my eyes open enough to look through my eyelashes at my surroundings. No use letting anyone watching know I was awake. Furniture blanket I determined from my quick glimpse. No one in my line of sight. Good. Still need to keep my eyes closed, body relaxed. Don't know who, if anyone, is watching.

I'd been snatched in the wee hours of Thursday morning as I was attempting to enter my flat. They'd hit me with a Tazer then after I'd gone down injected me with some sort of sedative to knock me out. I'd not registered any presence in the hall when I'd exited the lift. So where had they come from? I remembered a draft coinciding with my key in the lock. Ah. They'd come from the flat across. The one that the former tenant had vacated two days ago. Even though MI6 didn't own the building they vetted everyone before they moved in. Given that, the flats didn't turn over much so whomever these people were they must have had good intel to know it was empty. Hmm. They'd also have needed decent tech to get past the building's security. That was even more worrisome.

I realized my thoughts were wandering. Damn drug. OK. Focus. How many attackers? Minimum two. One for the Tazer and one wearing a pair of knock off trainers, black, and a pair of jeans. I'd seen them when he'd knelt down and injected me. I'd also seen the injector. Some sort of preloaded epi-pen like device. That indicated a certain level of technical competence and preplanning. Changing the payload on a standard one of those wasn't the world's most easy tasks. Hell, I'd done it enough when I'd started at MI6. Of course that was before I'd invented the pen with the exchangeable drug cartridges that could also, surprise surprise, actually be used as a pen. It wasn't quite the exploding pen that Bond was continually badgering me about designing but it was useful all the same.

So how long had I been out? Depending upon what they'd used at least four to five hours. Luckily or not I'd inherited the Holmes family drug resistances. That meant I had a high tolerance and quickly metabolized most pain killers and sedatives. It made it a bitch to deal with anesthesia of any sort and it had almost killed Sherlock during his drug addicted period. He'd OD'd due to the fact that it tended to take quite a bit more than the usual dose to affect him. The only reason we'd not lost him was that Mycroft had him under surveillance at the time and had tipped off then Constable Lestrade. Well I guess the idiosyncratic drug reaction had come in handy, now that I thought about it, since without that near miss Sherlock wouldn't have grudgingly agreed to go into rehab. Shit, Shit, Shit, mind back on track.

Time. What time is it? 005 had been extracted at 00:30. It had taken a little less than two hours to tie up the loose ends and shut down the communications links. That put me out of Q branch at about 02:30 or so. It was only 15 minutes or so to my flat the given the way most of the MI6 drivers run and the time of night so I'd entered the lobby at approximately 02:45. I'd grabbed my mail, mostly junk addressed to my cover identity an IT professional named Quinn Boothroyd, and headed for my flat. That meant I'd been hit with the Tazer about 02:50. Judging by the size of the injector pen and the way my mind was reacting add five hours. 08:00 or so then. Might be later depending on what they used. Unless there was an emergency R wouldn't react to my nonappearance until at least 08:30. So what would she do? Where would she start? She'd try and call. Did I still have my phone? I couldn't feel it. Did it drop out of my pocket or did they toss it?

Bloody hell, I was getting off track again. Analyze the current situation. Listen. Just like the game Sherlock and I played when we were little. How many people in the room? This was just a little harder with all the squeaks and rattles of the lorry as it bounced over the road. Breathing and rustling. At least one person then. The lorry went around a corner. I let the momentum roll me over. I cracked my eyes. Two thugs. We were inside a furniture truck as indicated by the folded moving blankets they were sitting on. Neither was wearing the black trainers. OK. Two thugs and a driver. Thug One and Thug Two I mentally dubbed them for ease of reference. Like those two red haired imps in that book from my childhood. The one with the cat. I could vaguely remember my mother's voice reading to me from the brightly colored book. I had so few clear memories of her. I'd been very young, barely four, when she'd died. I also had early memories of sitting on Mycroft's lap listening to him reading philosophy. I hadn't understood much at first but he'd always taken the time to at least define the terms and answer my half-formed questions. But my favorite had been Sherlock reading maths. Math made sense to me. It was beautiful, orderly, pristine and Sherlock's voice even then had a resonant quality that was totally captivating.

Sherlock. Sherlock's game. Oh crap. Back to the situation at hand. So let's see what we have. Thug One. Ex-boxer from south London. Works as a security guard when he works at all. Girlfriend, no wife, left him within the last six months probably because he'd been out of steady legitimate work for a year or more. Brought into this because he happens to be a childhood mate of Thug Two. Thug Two. Gang member. Former drug dealer who occasionally dipped into his product line. Lives at home with his mother who has no idea what he does for a living. Recently promoted and this is his first big job. Sherlock could have deduced more but that was not bad considering I didn't have my glasses. Now what could I deduce about the driver? Judging from the driving style he was used to handling the lorry but not completely familiar with the area we were in right now. I wonder if he was wearing the black trainers?

What the heck is wrong with me? My mind was jumping from topic to topic like a teenager with ADHD. I closed my eyes fully and tried to relax, to not think, just to exist for a moment. The lorry was slowing down, stopping. I heard the beeps as the driver put it into reverse and started backing up. Now that the movement of the truck had mostly subsided I realized that my body felt like it was spinning slightly, almost as if I were drunk. What the hell had they used to put me out?

The lorry came to a stop and the engine cut out. My two thuggish guards got up and stood over me. Thug One knelt down and slapped my face lightly, "Come on you ruddy bastard, wake up."

"If he doesn't I'm not carrying him," the other commented.

I decided to act drunk. I groaned and made what would look like a half-hearted attempt to roll over.

As I had expected the two thugs took this as an indication that they could get me to walk rather than to have to carry me. They each gripped one of my arms and together hauled me to my feet between them. I sagged a bit and lurched sideways into one of them making a grab as if to catch myself. This had the desired effect of making the other thug let go of my arm.

The thug who had let go laughed at his compatriot and said, "Look who's got himself a lover boy!"

That was when I struck. An elbow to the solar plexus, heel of my hand to the end of the nose, and a stamp on the instep freed me from the thug who was holding me up. While he was distracted I swung around and punched the other thug in the balls as hard as I could followed up with a gut punch to paralyze his diaphragm and keep him from screaming. He went down with a whimper. The back lift gate was rolled up then and I got a good look at the driver. Sure enough, Black Trainers.

"Oi" was all he had time to say before I launched myself at him. Unfortunately I had forgotten that Thug One was the ex-boxer. He'd only been annoyed by the blows that I'd used to escape from his grasp, not seriously inconvenienced. I thought I could get around him using speed but the drugs were impairing my reaction time so he managed to grab hold of my leg slamming me into the floor of the lorry. He was on me in an instant, attempting to pin me with his weight. I head butted his injured nose and he rocked back but not enough for me to completely get out from under him. That was when the driver got me again with the injector pen. It worked just as well the second time and I blacked out.

********

There was swaying, engine noise, and my head was spinning. I felt much worse than I had the first time. I was also slightly nauseous. I seemed to be wrapped in a blanket and lying on the bench seat of some sort of car. No, more likely it was a passenger van or SUV. I could feel that they had buckled the seat belts around me so I wouldn't roll off the seat. My hands were secured somehow behind my back. Zip ties?

I tried to estimate the time judging from the light and the way I felt. Noon? Sometime after? MI6 was most likely looking for me by now. R would have called both my flat and my cell when I didn't make it in to the branch. God knows where my cell was now but I wasn't too worried about it. Like all general issue MI6 phones if someone tried to use it without the code it would appear to function normally but would lock anything secret and send out a silent distress call. My phone was a little more complex than standard issue. There were certain features on my phone that would, if not accessed properly, cause it to slag itself in a rather spectacular manner. Now wouldn't that be a nice surprise for my captors. I suppressed the smile that that particular image invoked.

I wondered if anyone had managed to make it into my flat yet. I hoped someone remembered the defenses. If they hadn't whomever broke would encounter an escalating gauntlet of booby traps ranging from merely incapacitating to the downright lethal. My AI that ran the whole show would deactivate on voice command for only certain people. Would they be smart enough to back off or would my traps end up killing someone? I hoped I wasn't going to inadvertently cause the death of a coworker. It would not be best move in interoffice relations.

My captors must have been watching me very closely, "I think he's waking up," one of them said. It sounded like Thug One's voice.

"Shift over, I'll deal with it," said another voice.

I heard movement then felt a hand on my neck taking my pulse. I tried to keep calm but my autonomic nervous system was having none of it. My heart rate sped up as the natural fight or flight response kicked in and the adrenaline hit my bloodstream.

"Hand me the box under the seat," ordered the voice that went with the hand on my neck.

I decided to open my eyes since they clearly knew I was awake. Even without my glasses I could see that I was strapped into the back seat of a minivan. Black Trainers was kneeling in between the two captain's style seats that made up the second row with his hand still on my neck.

He noticed me looking at him. "I hope you are worth the trouble boffin," he commented. "You injured two of my boys. You'll have to forgive me if I don't allow you to have another go at it." His smile was nasty. He continued, "You are worth a lot of money to me. Less if I deliver you too battered but don't think for a minute that I won't take the penalty if you push me." He grinned like he wanted me to try something just so he could slap me around.

I decided not to respond other than to glare at him. Trussed up as I was there wasn't much I could do anyway. Black Trainers moved back into one of the second row seats. Thug One handed him something that was about the size of a cigar box. Black Trainers opened the box and started messing around in it. I had a bad feeling about this.

Black Trainers gave the box back to Thug One then moved back into the aisle. He was watching me closely. Then he moved. He used one of his forearms to press me into the seat, unwrapped the blanket partially and grabbed me to access my arm. With the other hand he put his hand out and Thug One handed him something. A moment or two later I felt the bite of a needle into the inside of my arm and the burn of something injected directly into a vein. Crap. I could feel the drug start to take hold. The dizziness increased, my eyesight went even more blurry then there was a rush of something that made me relax. The pain of my arms being tied and the overall achiness faded. Judging from the effects I was feeling it was probably an opiate of some sort.

Black Trainers released his hold when he felt my body relax. He was correct. There was no way I was going anywhere or doing anything. The euphoria of the drug high was starting to set in. Even if I wanted to move I wouldn't be coordinated enough to do so right now. I also was losing my grip on consciousness. He continued to look at me until he was sure that the drug had fully taken effect then moved back into his seat depositing the used syringe into the box as he went.

"That will hold him for a bit," was the last thing I really registered before the drug effects overwhelmed me.


	4. Clues

We piled into the car. Sherlock, Shirley and I in the back; James in the front; Not-Anthea driving. All was silent as we took off. I could tell Shirley was tense but Sherlock was practically vibrating. I couldn't tell if it was worry about his brother or just a variant of his normal agitation when he had no data to process but expected some shortly. Judging from his face was most likely a combination of the two. Shirley, on the other hand, was harder for me to read but then again I'd only met her twice before. There was concern along with something else I couldn't identify. Watching her out of the corner of my eye I caught the moment when she seemed to come to a decision.

"Abagail?" She addressed her comment to our driver.

"Yes?"

Interesting. Mycroft's PA had told me once she changed her name every two weeks or so just to keep in practice. So how did Shirley know Not-Anthea's correct nom-de-fortnight without asking?

"Can you reveal your mandate?" she asked conversationally.

"Yes."

Shirley's sigh sounded somewhat exasperated. "Please do so," she said.

"I am to deliver you, collectively, to your destination then to aid and assist in whatever way possible in the investigation." Abagail stated blandly.

"Without reservation?" Shirley asked.

"In whatever way possible," she confirmed with a distinct emphasis on the whatever.

I saw James' eyebrows go up slightly. "And what of your principal responsibility?" he asked.

Well that confirmed it. The more I associated with Mycroft's PA the more I was sure that she was also his bodyguard. His last line of defense against an attack.

"In a secure location for the duration," Abagail said matter-of-factly.

Sherlock snorted. "He's borrowing the PM's war room again," he announced to the group.

"You are aware that I can neither confirm nor deny that speculation," was her response.

"Not speculation. Deduction," Sherlock shot back immediately.

The conversation lagged at that point and Shirley pulled out her smart phone. It never ceased to amaze me the connections that Mycroft had. Not for the first time did I wonder what this minor governmental official did that allowed him to borrow the Prime Minister's ultra-secure, top secret communications bunker at a moment's notice?

Suddenly my phone buzzed. Abagail's blackberry, which was sitting on the dashboard in a cradle vibrated next followed by Sherlock's phone in his pocket. I looked at mine. It was a text containing a phone number.

Shirley said "Contact number. It will reach me at any time. I have acquired your numbers." She put her phone away.

We pulled up before a modern apartment building with a glassed in lobby and Abagail maneuvered the sedan into a spot almost directly in front of the door that was being vacated by a police car.

Shirley looked puzzled, "The investigatory team was behind us. This is..." She trailed off, blanching slightly.

"Lestrade's team," Sherlock supplied.

Sure enough through the glass I could see DI Lestrade, Donovan and a uniformed officer standing having a discussion in front of the lift. That meant that there was a body somewhere in the building.

Shirley slumped slightly then took a deep breath. She squared her shoulders and said simply, "Go."

Bond was out on the sidewalk almost instantly. He took a quick scan of the vicinity then opened the door for Shirley. It was clear that he was using his body to block the obvious lines of potential sniper fire. Abagail was only slightly slower out of the car. She blocked Sherlock's access out of his side forcing him to scoot along the seat and follow me out. I took a quick look and agreed with James. Sniper fire would potentially come from only two places. I made sure that I would be in the way if anyone decided to take a pot shot at Sherlock.

Abagail moved to the door of the apartment complex and held it open for us. Lestrade's back was to us but Donovan spotted Sherlock and made a face. Then she spotted Shirley and her mouth dropped open. Predictably Lestrade caught both reactions and whirled. I could see he registered Shirley first with a bit of confusion. Then he registered Bond, Sherlock and I. Finally he noted Abagail holding the door and the clearly government car parked at the curb. At that point his face went into that completely blank official police mode that I'd seen him do when dealing with his superiors, politicians or other VIP's.

Shirley didn't let him get a word out. "Inspector Lestrade," she said putting the entire exchange on a professional footing immediately. "I have information for you," she continued as she looked around presumably for a place to have at least a semi-private conversation.

James caught her look and pointed with his chin at a nook containing the post boxes for the building. Shirley then grabbed Lestrade by the elbow and maneuvered him into the indicated area while Bond took up a stance between them and the rest of the lobby.

Sherlock walked up to Donovan. "So how are you involved freak?" she asked.

"I've been retained," was his response. "Has Anderson screwed up the crime scene yet?"

"The forensics folks are stuck in traffic," Donovan didn't sound too pleased.

"So he swapped you for someone younger and blonder in forensics." It wasn't a question. Sherlock was in fine form.

"Now listen freak," Donovan started and the sniping was well and truly joined.

I only kept tabs on it with half an ear. Just enough to tell if I needed to step in and defuse the situation before it came to blows. I was more interested in the conversation Shirley and Lestrade were having in the corner. She was talking earnestly at him and at speed. It didn't really look like she was getting anywhere because Lestrade was just standing there his face blandly attentive his body language restrained. The only other time I'd seen him look like that was just after Sherlock's death when both the media and his superiors were hounding him. I'd learned then that his default method of dealing with extreme emotion, especially anger, was to shut down and become excessively formal. It certainly looked like that was what he was doing now.

I glanced back at Sherlock and Donovan. They were still trading insults. She was refusing to let him look at the crime scene without proper authorization and he was deducing Anderson's new love interest from her reactions to his needling. Something was off however. He was continuing to annoy Donovan long after he'd managed to invoke her anger. Then it hit me. Sherlock only had part of his attention on the conversation. He'd also placed himself strategically so that Donovan's back was to the corner in which her boss was having his tete-a-tete with his maybe soon to be ex-girlfriend. Interesting. For a self-proclaimed high functioning sociopath Sherlock was showing an extreme degree of empathy for Lestrade's situation. He caught me looking and his eyes widened slightly. I gave him an approving smile then focused back on Lestrade and Shirley just in time to see her start to reach out to him and his minute head shake. They'd come to some sort of agreement then. Neither of them looked happy but at least they seemed to be able to work together. I wondered if that relationship would survive the investigation.

Conference over Shirley and Lestrade started back toward the rest of us. Shirley stopped and exchanged a few words with Bond as she headed toward the door. He didn't look pleased but he escorted her to the car presumably for delivery to MI6 by Abagail then reentered the lobby to join us.

In the meantime Lestrade had started talking to Sherlock. The yard had been called in when the building manager had found the body of an estate agent in the rubbish bin out back. There was a vacant flat on the third floor which accounted for the agent's presence in the building. By the time Bond reached the group Lestrade was explaining how they hadn't had time to do much more than secure the building and the back alley so Sherlock would have a relatively pristine scene to work with. "and judging from the blood the murder site is the stairwell. Looks like he was pushed." Lestrade paused a moment, "Used the estate agent to set up the kidnapping then."

"Of course," replied Sherlock, "You are not entirely dense Lestrade"

Bond had politely waited for the conversation to lull then addressed Sherlock, "I'm your liaison for the duration of this investigation." Sherlock looked sour. James merely raised an eyebrow "With you or after you, your choice Mr. Holmes."

"Up to you to keep up then," was Sherlock's gruff response as he turned and headed for the lift.

Lestrade glanced at Bond then looked questioningly at me. I gave him a nod that I hoped he'd interpret as a promise to fill him in later.

We all piled into the lift. Sherlock maneuvered himself so that he was directly in front of the doors. I took up my usual position on his right while Bond took up a similar post on his left. He was crowding a bit and I realized that I probably needed to talk to James, to fill him in on the finer points of trailing about after Sherlock. I shouldn't have worried. Bond picked up on something and backed off minutely. He was a master at reading people, even anomalous ones like Sherlock. No worries there then. As the doors of the lift opened I saw what I had been waiting for, that minute shift when Sherlock's brain fully focused on the Work. All that mattered now was the collection and analysis of data. The game was indeed afoot.

We looked out into a hallway with two doors, one on each side, each presumably leading into a flat and a door to the emergency stairwell at the end. There was a scattering of mail on the floor in front of one of the doors as well as a key ring hanging from a key in the lock. Sherlock raised his hand to stop us from exiting the lift. I had expected this and mashed my finger on the door open button.

He didn't pause long before striding out into the hall with the lot of us trailing after. A quick look at the door with the key then he turned, went down on one knee and examined the floor near the scattered pieces of post. He glanced around as he stood up then took two quick steps to the other door. A quick look at the lock then his hand shot out pushing at the door. It swung open, not even latched, revealing an empty expanse of room that smelled of cleaning supplies. Sherlock didn't enter, merely glanced around then turned to Lestrade.

"He exited the lift, put his key in the door then was hit with something that took him to the floor and kept him there. Likely a Taser followed up by something anesthetizing. It probably wasn't inhaled there's no residue on the carpet but check anyway. There were three of them. Two heavy set men. Local thugs most likely under the command of a third who knew what he was doing. The opposite flat has been empty for less than a week and they waited there for at least seven hours. It's your murder scene but I don't expect you'll find much. One of the three is a professional. They cleaned up thoroughly after themselves," Sherlock paused.

Lestrade wasn't fazed by the rapid fire deductions since he was used to them. He simply looked interested and said, "And?"

Sherlock continued, "Check why the former tenant moved out. If this was planned it may be related. I'll also need the surveillance feed. It will give me more data to work with."

"Surveillance feed?" Lestrade asked. "Where are the cameras?" Lestrade looked around confusedly at the hallway.

"Front lobby and the lift. Those belong to the building. There are additional ones in that corner, and over the stairwell door," Bond said conversationally, then added as an afterthought "I suspect the building owners don't know about those."

Lestrade looked stunned. "Why would anyone want, need.." his voice trailed off as he, for probably the first time since Shirley had filled him in, really processed he was in charge of not only a murder investigation but also the kidnapping of a high level MI6 asset.

Donovan, who clearly wasn't in the loop, muttered "Someone was a paranoid git" earning herself a glare from both Bond and Sherlock. Wisely she didn't continue with whatever other comment she had been going to make.

James then surprised me by speaking up. "We'll need to access the server from inside his apartment. It will be the fastest way to get all the feeds." He walked back to the apartment door reached for the handle then paused as if thinking. After a moment Bond turned the key and I heard the lock release. He then continued turning it a full 180 from its original position before attempting to open the door. Odd. Something special with the lock? He opened the door and we were looking at a small foyer beyond which was a very modern looking living room. James stepped across the threshold then froze.

"Damn," was all he said.

"Pressure sensor?" Sherlock asked.

"Yes," came the terse reply.

I understood then. Q had booby trapped his flat. The thing with the lock was part of it. If not opened correctly the door handle would do something. A trigger or maybe electrified? God only knows what would have happened if someone had tried to pick it. I didn't have much time to reflect on that particular revelation because a rather pleasant female voice suddenly said, "Verification procedure commencing, please state name and designation."

James replied immediately, "Bond, 007."

I glanced at Lestrade. He looked stunned. It was clear he knew what the designation meant. It was also obvious that he hadn't known just exactly who he'd been dealing with when Bond had killed Moran in that empty building over six months ago.

There was a short pause then the voice continued, "What is the stag's motto?"

"Orbis non-sufficit," James said flatly.

"Disarmed" said the disembodied voice.

James moved on into the flat then and we followed. The flat was neat and tidy with the exception of a box full of what looked like random electronic components sitting on the coffee table. The furnishings were modern and minimalistic which was offset somewhat by a profusion of large pillows piled on the sofa and in one corner. There was a large flat screen monitor hanging on one wall with a gaming console and entertainment unit in a bookcase underneath. An open door went to a bedroom through which a bed in the same style as the rest of the furniture was barely visible. I didn't have much time to register anything much else because James walked over to a closed door, opened it and walked through saying, "I'd advise you not to touch anything in here."

This room was obviously the flat's second bedroom but it looked nothing at all like a bedroom. There was a pair of metal racks full of running computer components in one corner, a workbench up against a wall and a desk that had four monitors and a wireless keyboard. The rest of the room had shelves full of plastic boxes containing god knows what. As we all entered one of the monitors on the desk lit up. From the screen it appeared to be buffering an audio file. Moments later it began to play.

"If you are hearing this," said Quentin's voice said from the speakers, "then the emergency protocols have been triggered and I have been compromised. The camera feeds are now being downloaded to the office servers. If you need to access this set of servers tell R to use protocol A-4 and my favorite Russian expletive backwards. If you lock the front door when you leave the automatic defenses will re-engage." The audio file ended but another one appeared to be opening. "007," Quentin's voice sounded slightly different. It had obviously been recorded at another time. "There is a pen made with a bullet shell casing sitting in the cup on the workbench. It's yours. Turn the bottom a quarter turn anti-clockwise then click the top twice. You'll have five seconds. It's a prototype but the results should be rather spectacular. Good luck 007"

James shook his head in amazement then walked over to the workbench and fished out the mentioned pen. He stared at it for a moment then put it in his pocket muttering something about cheeky Quartermasters.

"You know," Lestrade said half to himself, "Technically I should confiscate all this for analysis especially since it appears to contain footage of the crime." He didn't really sound too enthusiastic about the idea.

"You wouldn't get anything if you did," Sherlock commented as he was peering behind one of the server racks. "It looks like most of the equipment is set up to fail if you try and remove it."

"Fail? How?" Lestrade asked.

Bond snorted, "Knowing Q, explosively."

"I suppose I can trust MI6 to send me a copy?" he asked Bond hopefully.

Bond paused for a moment and looked at him. "As soon as the download is complete."

Excuse provided Lestrade stated, "Then I'm finished here if you are," and turned to exit.

We all followed him out of the flat James and I bringing up the rear. He locked the door and pocketed the key. No one objected. Sherlock was already down at the end of the hall examining the door to the stairwell with Lestrade hot on his heels. James made an after you gesture to me and together we sauntered along in the wake of Sherlock's investigation.

We arrived at the stairwell door just in time to hear Sherlock say "look at that mark, of course he was dead when he was tossed over the railing."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Orbis non-sufficit = the world is not enough.
> 
> Please read and review. Reviews make my muse happy and more productive.


	5. Ebrius

The disorientation of whatever I'd been given was starting to back off. I vaguely registered that I was in a bed, untied and someone was combing their hand through my hair. I attempted to recall anything from the time Black Trainers had drugged me with the opiate. There wasn't much.

I'd slept or passed out after being drugged in the car only coming to while being carried face down over a shoulder. My mind labeled it as belonging to Thug One. I'd been sat on a couch, my hands still tied behind me. I'd promptly fallen over sideways and drifted off again. The next thing I remember was an argument. Black Trainers' voice having an angry sounding discussion with someone. They weren't in the room but somewhere close. A hallway perhaps? I couldn't follow the words. My mind refused to wrap itself around them but I picked up on the tone and emotions. Black Trainers was belligerent with an undertone of fear. The second voice was upset and was blaming Black Trainers.

I had decided at that point that it might be a good idea to try and sit up. It didn't work too well with my hands tied and I ended up rolling off the couch. I hit something on the way down knocking whatever-it-was over with a crash. The argument stopped immediately. The door to the room was thrown open letting in what I thought was an inordinate amount of bright light. At the same time I managed to get my knees under me and stagger to my feet. One side of my face was wet. The contrast between the light in the hall and the darkness of the room along with no glasses made it impossible to see anything except two indistinct forms in the doorway. The second voice started barking orders and it sounded very far away to me. I still couldn't understand what was being said but the tone made me want to cringe. Perversely I decided not to. I glared in the general direction of the voice. Someone laughed. It felt like I should know that laugh. I was sure I'd heard it before. One of the forms in the doorway moved slowly toward me just as everything grayed out.

I concentrated on the hand combing through my hair. Letting it anchor me to stop the room from spinning. After a minute or so I felt like I might be able to do something. I was most likely still a prisoner but it was clear I had changed hands. I wasn't sure of the significance of the hand in my hair but maybe I could use it to my advantage. Keeping my eyes closed I groaned and shifted slightly to gage the response. The hand stilled then was removed. I decided that a whimper was appropriate so I did so. Someone shifted beside me and I was gathered up and held against a chest.

The someone was male. Larger than I was. Six foot one or two if he was proportional to his chest. Strong, good muscle tone, clean shaven. Smelled of soap with a hint of cigarette smoke. Not a smoker then but associated with those who did. Then I was jolted out of my deductions by his voice. The voice I'd never thought I'd ever hear again.

"Ah my poor Ghost," said Dominic Greene, "or should I call you Quinn now? You really have had a time of it."

It was a good thing that I was still heavily under the influence and couldn't stiffen up even if I wanted to. That reaction could very well, if Dom happened to take offense, be painful.

I decided that a noncommittal response was safest, "Muumm?"

"Really now Ghost, you didn't forget me since I've been away?"

Uh oh. Did he know I'd leaked the information that had sent him to prison on a drugs charge? I couldn't have framed him for fraud and skimming from his competitors because that would have implicated me as we'll since I had set up the hacks that allowed him to do it. So I did one better. I orchestrated his arrest and conviction as an illegal drug importer. I'd thought it a bit ironic at the time since that was the one area of his father's operation that Dominic hadn't had any control over at the time.

"Um Dom?" I tried to sound confused and non-threatening.

"You do remember!" He sounded pleased. "Imagine my surprise when I found my little Ghost had gone all legitimate." He chuckled, "Cushy IT job, nice flat but you must still be dabbling since you ended up with a hefty price on your head a couple years ago"

Crap. He knew about the hit Moriarty had placed on my cover identity at the time of Sherlock's fake suicide. That was probably why he was able to locate me. Somehow Dom had been made aware of the hit and made the connection. Question was how much else did he know? Did he just have the cover identity or did he have more? Had he figured out the family connection that had prompted the bounty on my head?

"Whass?" Hopefully he'd continue to monologue and give me more information.

"Oh don't be coy Quinn," Dominic sounded slightly annoyed now. "That hit order disappeared fast. You bought it off."

"Um hum". I yawned and blinked my eyes open. It was still a bit hard to think around the remnants of the narcotic. Part of my incoherence wasn't really an act. I needed to get my head in the game. Dominic had played me once and I wasn't going to let him do it again.

I'd been sixteen at the time. Just starting my third year at university. I'd been using my middle name, Nigel, and actively distancing myself from the surname Holmes. _No really, no relation to those Holmes'._ Mycroft was working his way into being indispensable in the Home Office at the time and Sherlock was just starting his experimentations with illicit substances. I was keeping my head down, my mouth shut and trying not to be too obviously bored with my coursework. The only thing that had been keeping me sane at the time was hacking. I'd taken to breaking into supposedly secure systems just to show I could. My handle in hacker circles had been Ghost and by the time I'd met Dominic I'd built quite a reputation as being able to get into a wide variety of places most of which never knew I'd been there. I'd been taking jobs that couldn't be described as completely white but never something that was treasonous.

Dominic was primarily a business student who dabbled in computers. He was also working at a local shop where most of the computer department got their miscellaneous pieces of electronics. I had no idea at the time that it doubled as a money laundering operation.

The shop was where I had met him. Over several months he pursued me then seduced me. I don't know if he knew I was Ghost at first but when he found out he turned his considerable charm on me to convince me to do some more illicit work. It had sounded like a good idea at the time. I hacked to my heart's content and deluded myself that I was _doing good_ by going after various drug suppliers and other criminal types, ruining their business deals and running off with their money. What I hadn't realized was that I was eliminating the competition and solidifying Dom's position. It lasted little over a year. The more I did the stranger and more violent Dominic became. By the end of it I found that I'd become trapped in an abusive relationship with the heir apparent to one of the biggest criminal drug operations in the country. Sherlock deduced the problem, got me out and helped me set up Dominic's arrest. Mycroft pulled strings and as far as I knew anyone from that time of my life thought I was dead.

Thinking back I almost missed the next question. "So how did you get away Ghost?" His voice was flat. One of his hands had moved to wrap itself around my throat. "How did you manage not to get caught with all the rest of us?"

I went completely still the adrenaline rush burning off at least part of the drug effects. I knew he'd be able to feel my heart race. "Luck," I said softly. It wasn't even a lie. The police had jumped the gun on the raid. If I hadn't been out and Sherlock hadn't warned me to stay away I'd have been caught up with Dom and all the rest.

"Luck?" He echoed back at me. His voice and posture was just a hair's breath away from violence. I was amazed that I could still tell how close he was to hurting me even after all these years.

"An acquaintance saw the raid. He told me. I got scared. I ran. Erased myself. Made myself dead." Once again it had the advantage of being true. An acquaintance had told me. Admittedly it had been several days after the fact. I had been scared and ran but I'd mostly been scared of Dominic. I'd also worked with Mycroft on altering the computerized records to make myself dead.

"So how did you get a price on your head? You used to be good at not getting noticed."

This was going to be tricky. Hopefully he didn't know about Sherlock but if he did I'd need to weave in just enough of that story to make it fit with what was known publicly. "Client got crosswise with one of the big players. My name apparently came up in conversation resulting in the bounty. The big player got offed before I could explain and cut a deal."

Dom's hand twitched. "The client gave you up to Moriarty?" he asked.

I shrugged slightly. He'd been awful quick to put that together. Damn. How much did he know? Had he been a part of Moriarty's network or was he a client? Moriarty had called himself a consulting criminal after all.

Dominic didn't seem to notice my lack of an answer to his question. He simply continued, "So when Moriarty had his tangle with that detective it bit you. You then had to buy out the contract. Where did you get the funds?"

"Where do you think?" I rolled my eyes at him.

His hand clamped down on my neck then and I let out an involuntary squeak. Ouch. Crap I needed to give him something. I couldn't just tell him that MI6 had tracked and eliminated the assassin.

"I'm 17-10 now," I gasped. That was one of the more active of my hacker handles. 17-10 was known for being a top notch security consultant with the habit of not asking too many questions about the nature of the business requesting the work. If Dom was still tracking the shady side of the computer consulting like he used to, I had a good chance that he'd have heard of the handle.

His hand relaxed and he started stroking his thumb over the edge of my jaw. "So you did keep your hand in," Dominic almost purred in my ear. "I didn't think even a cushy IT job paid enough for that nice a flat." His mouth was right behind my ear and I could feel his breath on the back of my neck. His hand had moved and he was now starting to caress my shoulder. "That's good," he continued while nuzzling my neck, "because I have a little job for you."

 _Bloody hell!_ Dominic was trying to pick up with me where he had left off. I knew the proper response from MI6 training was to play along. Lure the kidnapper into a sense of security that you are cooperating and they'd make mistakes. Unfortunately, I really couldn't let that happen here. For one thing I've never been able to turn arousal on and off like a switch. We all can't be like James Bond ready, willing and able to seduce and bed someone, anyone, for Queen and Country at the drop of a hat. Secondly, my sexual attraction is more dependent upon my trust of a particular person rather than upon their sex. Since I didn't trust Dom at all there was no way in hell I could physically perform. However, the primary reason I couldn't play along was that Dominic had broken something in me a decade ago. If I let him touch me that way again I ran the very real risk of ending up curled in on myself in a corner permanently. He wanted me for something, something specific therefore my going catatonic would just get me killed. So what to do? How to make him go with pain instead of pleasure? Rejection. Injury. Hit him in the pride. I was going to have to be very clever with this. Not enough pain and he'd suspect I was pulling one over. He knew some of what I could take from before. It was going to be tricky convincing him that had beat me into cooperating with whatever he wanted.

I surprised him when I moved away. I elbowed him in the chest and tried to back hand my fist into his nose. He turned his head and I connected with his cheekbone instead. I attempted to kick him in the crotch as I scrambled off the bed. The drugs still were impairing both my accuracy and sense of balance so I missed and fell. All those sparring sessions with the trainers that I'd thought of as wasted time stood me in good stead because I managed to turn the fall into a credible shoulder roll to a defensive crouch. There was no way I could win but at least I could put up a bit of a fight.

Dominic was still sitting on the bed absent mindedly rubbing his hand on his face where I'd hit him. "Now that wasn't very nice Nige," he said in that deceptively calm tone he used just before all hell broke loose.

I gritted my teeth this waited for his move. _Bugger. This was going to hurt._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is Latin for inebriated or drugged. Dominic Greene is named for a character in The Secret World Chronicle. Q's handle 17-10 is derived from Q being the 17th letter of the alphabet and 10 is the number of points it's worth in scrabble.


	6. Legwork

It had been 36 hours since Shirley had walked into 221B and set the world on its end. Some things were the same though. Sherlock was sitting in his chair with his hands clasped, fingers steepled in front of his face. By the cadence of his breathing I could tell he was thinking rather than rummaging around in his memory palace. I was in my chair pretending to read the newspaper. What I was actually doing was watching the anomaly in our normal domestic scene who was sitting on the sofa wearing jeans and a turtleneck looking utterly at home. If there was one thing I envied about James was his talent to look comfortable in most any situation. It had been obvious from the start that Shirley's assignment of him to us as our MI6 Liaison was the polite version of _keep track of Sherlock so his brother won't feel the need to do so_. Neither Bond nor Sherlock were happy with the situation but they'd seemed to come to an accommodation of sorts. A mutual détente occasionally enforced by me that kept both of them civil.

After Sherlock had a go at the crime scene we'd gone back to the flat and examined the surveillance video. Quentin had set it up rather cleverly. He'd had enough space allocated to store at least 72 hours of continuous footage. He'd also set it up so that the recording would only occur when there was action in the hallway. That way he had almost a month of activity at any one time. Each camera was triggered by multiple sensors so that bypassing one did not necessarily mean that the recording would not trigger. He'd used motion detectors, switches on the doors and even a pressure plate under the rug to start recording. The video had recorded the estate agent arriving and showing a well-dressed man the empty flat. The well-dressed man had left and three others had shown up shortly thereafter presumably to also look at the empty flat. No one left the flat until the three men ambushed Q and drugged him. From their subsequent actions, removing the estate agent's body from the flat and tossing it down the stairwell, it looked like they were attempting to set a scene that would implicate Q in the estate agent's murder to explain why he disappeared. Something had made them abandon that plan since they rabbited out of the building, dumping the body in the rubbish bin.

From the video Sherlock was able to deduce quite a bit about the three attackers. There were two enforcer types and a guy who directed them. The muscle were from South London, best mates from way back who had recently moved in together subletting from one or the other's mother. One had been a semi-pro boxer, the other a gang member with a recreational drug habit. The gang member had worked with the boss before but not extensively the boxer had not. The leader was something of an enigma. He kept the lower half of his face covered with a scarf from Norway but his coat was French and his boots were domestic. He wasn't carrying a firearm but as Bond pointed out; he was quite used to doing so and compensated for its weight. They both spotted the fact that he carried a knife strapped to his calf. In addition they noted that he moved like he had martial arts training but neither Sherlock nor James could get a definitive fix on the style which was saying something.

By the time we were done with the surveillance feeds Shirley had sent the CCTV pictures of the lorry. The leader acted as driver but we still didn't get a good look at his face. After watching a bit of the feed Sherlock stated that he had spent a substantial time driving in the U.S. or possibly learned to drive there. Something about the way he maneuvered the truck around corners. Shirley had managed to track them west onto the M4 but they'd nicked off the main road and out of reach of the cameras. She had apologized profusely but she noted that it was going to take time as they had to poll all the available cameras in concentric circles from where she lost them in an attempt to pick them up again and then repeat the process every time it moved out of a covered area.

It was early evening of that first day when the full scope of Bond's orders were revealed. Sherlock stood up saying "I'm heading out" and strode for the door. He'd only made it half way when he whirled and said to James "And I don't need your assistance on this Mr. Bond!"

I looked up in time to catch a flash of annoyance on James' face as he appeared to relax back into the sofa. As soon as the front door closed however, he was on his feet. Given what I suspected Sherlock was up to I thought at the time it was better if I intervened.

"He's going to alert his homeless network. They barely tolerate me. You would scare them into noncooperation." I had told him.

"Orders," Bond said as he headed across the room. He paused with his hand on door knob and looked at me, "I won't be seen."

James obviously had thought he had an edge. Not with Sherlock he wouldn't. I had to snort. Even with some sort of technological wizardry I would bet on Sherlock being able to spot and lose a tail anywhere in London. Mycroft's people had learned that lesson the hard way several months ago.

"The last time someone attempted to put an electronic tracker on Sherlock they ended up chasing a stray dog for half the night."

James raised his eyebrows, "It's good to have a challenge occasionally," was his reply.

"Well if you don't want him to realize you are following immediately, I suggest that you go out my window and either up to the roof or down the drain pipe. Although," I continued, "I wouldn't put it past him to deduce that I'd advise you and then be watching for just that contingency."

James had flashed a cocky grin at that. "This ought to be interesting then," he commented as he exited through the flat's door.

Two and a half hours later Sherlock had stalked back in. His face was composed but judging from his body language he was none too pleased. He flopped into his chair without saying a word. James arrived five minutes later looking just as composed but radiating as much annoyance as Sherlock. He plopped down on the sofa. Knowing both of them I could guess what had happened. Sherlock was annoyed that he wasn't able to loose Bond completely. James was annoyed that Sherlock had managed avoid his tail, probably several times. I decided to wait to see which one of them would break the silence first.

It took ten minutes before Sherlock said, "You cheated."

"I utilized the tools I had available," James replied. "But what would you call that detour through the storm drains?"

"A short cut."

"Given where you ended up the closed tube line would have been faster."

"Says the man who strolled through that Gentleman's Club and stopped to snog the pole dancer."

"It slowed down the bouncer."

They subsided again but the hostility was still there although it was muted a bit. Since it wouldn't have done to have them at odds with each other for an extended period of time I had decided to remind them both why they needed to cooperate so I went and made tea. I made Earl Grey, Quentin's preference and the only reason we had it in the flat. I plunked a mug down in front of each of them without saying a word.

James raised his eyebrows as he registered the scent. Sherlock looked at me with that penetrating gaze of his. I didn't say anything as I sat down with my mug of tea and glared at both of them.

We sat in silence for a bit until James looked at Sherlock and said, "He's rather good at that isn't he?"

Sherlock sighed and replied, "Yes."

I had sat back in my chair then, secure in the knowledge that they both had received the message and would cooperate.

The next 24 hours had been tedious. Lestrade's team had discovered names for the two enforcer types. They were cousins, William "Bill" Gardner and Kevin Cotton. By the end of the day between the Met's legwork and Q-branch's electronic digging we had a good picture of their lives and the knowledge that they hadn't been seen in three days. We also knew, courtesy of Sherlock's network, that they were supposedly out of town on a _big job_ for one of Bill's drug suppliers.

Forensics had found the injector used to dose Quentin in the dumpster where the body had been dumped. It was an emergency epinephrine device that had been fitted with a different payload. Analysis of the contents had revealed a concoction that was mostly heroin but also contained a fast acting anesthetic. Once we had the full speciation of drugs Sherlock had retreated into his mind palace for several hours emerging with names of several drug dealers and suppliers who had the ability to make the drug mix and modify the pen injector. Mycroft had MI5 take the lead on the task of running them to ground but they hadn't found anything yet.

At the same time Q-Branch was still working on tracking the lorry. It was slow going but they were making progress. Every time they caught it on a new CCTV camera they sent the location plotted on a map and pictures to my laptop. Judging from the time stamps they were stopping in various locations for as few as five minutes to as long as an hour. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the stops other than they were all out of view of CCTV cameras. We did luck out at one point and get a good picture of the lorry driver. That sped things up a bit. Mycroft's people combed the immigration records for the leader and had found that he had entered the country less than a week ago using the name Dick Portier. That alias was linked to a drug ring on the continent which had been routed six months ago by Interpol. He had been one of the mid-level people who had managed to somehow escape the dragnet. He'd been keeping a low profile ever since. Mycroft had forwarded the entire file on the drug ring and what little was known about Mr. Portier.

After reading the files Mycroft had sent Sherlock had disappeared into his thoughts. James had subsided into a resting position on the couch. He had put himself into that combat zone where he could go from relatively relaxed to completely alert and ready to go instantly. I kept up the pretense of reading the paper even though I knew that I probably wasn't fooling James and I definitely wasn't fooling Sherlock.

It gave me time to observe my companions as well as to go over what little information we had. I hated this part of cases. In seven out of ten instances it seemed that we'd hit a place where there was nothing to do but wait for new data. Sherlock could only deduce so far without information. Information at this point was going to come from legwork and data analysis. The former was being done by NSY and in some cases Sherlock's homeless network. The latter was clearly Mycroft's people and Shirley's purview. That left James, Sherlock and I to twiddle our thumbs until a critical piece of information arrived which would tell us where to look next.

About 22:30 there was a knock on the door. I answered it to find a tired looking Lestrade clutching several sheets of printed paper. He handed me the papers and said, "Here's a list of everywhere we could find that Mr. Cotton has worked over the last two years on the books and as many as we could find off the books. Hopefully Sherlock can give us an idea of which to target first."

I ushered him into the flat. "Tea?"

"Yes," he replied as he massaged the bridge of his nose with one hand.

I turned for the kitchen only to notice that Bond had vacated the couch and was already there. Judging from the noise he was making the tea. Interesting. I handed the pages to Sherlock who immediately started to read.

James returned with tea and a plate of biscuits which he handed to Lestrade.

"Didn't realize MI6 trained agents to be domestic," was Lestrade's comment.

"Sometimes you need to be absolutely certain about your food supply," he remarked. "Given what is considered edible in some parts of the world and some of the things I've cooked, tea and biscuits is hardly a stretch."

Sherlock exhaled loudly at that moment with a soft _hah_.

We all turned to look at him.

"This one first," he pointed at an address.

Lestrade moved behind the chair to look over his shoulder, "Why?"

Sherlock started to reply when my laptop beeped. Two years ago, just after the explosion at the MI6 building, Quentin had borrowed my laptop for a couple of days. He returned it with upgrades as well as a back door that enabled him to get into it whenever it was on and logged into the internet. Sherlock had suspected but the confirmation of that particular addition had come when we'd given James a lift to Glasgow after what I had mentally labeled the Skyfall Explosion. In the last year Q had used it several times to request Sherlock's assistance. I had left the laptop on and plugged in ever since we'd found out about Q's kidnapping just in case. It might be easier and safer for him to get a message to me than directly to MI6. Of course Shirley had found the back door while poking around in Quentin's personal servers and after making appreciative noises about the elegance of the coding had co-opted it.

"Gentlemen," Shirley's voice came from the laptop speaker, "I've located the lorry."

Never to be one-upped Sherlock chimed in, "And it's within two blocks of a club called Infinity."

Shirley sounded confused. "Across the street actually," then after a pause she added, "Ah, Greg's list!"

"How did you get that?" Lestrade's tone was slightly annoyed. I couldn't tell if he was annoyed at Sherlock or Shirley.

Sherlock looked up at him with his _you are being an idiot_ look. The list was printed. Shirley was good at what she did. She most likely had a copy of that list as soon as Lestrade had saved it to his computer and printed it.

Lestrade glowered back at him but before the verbal fisticuffs started flying James spoke up, "R, what do you have for us so far?"

"Sending you the floor plan," she responded. "It's a small confidential delivery service. A various sized unmarked vehicles ranging from van sized to panel body lorry. They have ten part time drivers on call, a bookkeeper/accountant/payroll clerk, a manager that serves as a dispatcher, and a mechanic. The building has a full automotive service bay with a lift that can take the largest of the vehicles. The company makes a bit of extra on the side by doing minor repairs and service on their neighbor's vehicles. We are currently doing background on all the employees and the owner. We should have full dossiers by 03:00."

James grabbed the laptop it so he could look the floor plan. I moved behind the sofa to look and Lestrade also shifted. Sherlock had gone back into thinking mode for the moment. I knew he'd be aware of what we were doing but until he finished he would not move or comment on it.

Meanwhile James asked "Street layout?"

A satellite image with a street overview obligingly popped up. "I'll have ground views from CCTV cameras shortly," Shirley said.

"Soft cordon and raid it? I think I have enough to justify the resources." Lestrade asked.

"Our asset, our operation Detective Inspector," said an authoritative male voice from the computer, "but we'd appreciate the MET's presence to avoid misunderstandings."

Bond sat up straight at that despite the fact that the link was audio only. "Are you on for the duration sir?"

Given the reaction I had to conclude that this voice was the head of MI6 himself. Gareth Mallory, code name M, had taken over the position upon the death of his predecessor a little over two years ago now. As a former MP and head of the Intelligence and Security Committee he'd been confirmed in record time.

"On call 007. Someone has to deal with the political ramifications of all this," was the quick reply. "Tanner and Moneypenny will continue watch on watch with R and Spider until we conclude the operation."

Yetch, I thought, 12 hours on 12 hours off was a grueling schedule only invoked during high alerts by the military and by medical internists.

"Any change in parameters sir?" Bond asked.

"No. Carry on," came the flat response.

James' eyes flicked momentarily to Sherlock at that and a muscle in his jaw twitched. Oh, it was set up that way then. Stupid spy games. Even I could deduce this one. The mission was not just recovery of Quentin. Bond had orders to kill him if we couldn't get him out.

As soon as Bond had refocused back onto the digitized map I looked directly at Sherlock. He had opened his eyes. From the look on his face he had also caught the implications of that little exchange. He cocked an eyebrow at me in question. I nodded slightly back. If push came to shove we'd just have to stop James from acting and to hell with the consequences.

With that I focused on James and Greg who had moved smoothly back to planning the raid and the logistics involved in rounding up of any employees who were not present when we hit the place in the morning. It was going to be a long night.


	7. Compulsionem

Coming back to awareness feeling like I’d been beaten was getting old fast. Well I had been beaten. The soreness was understandable then. Dominic had not lost his talent for invoking the most pain with the least physical damage. He’d pounded me into unconsciousness twice before drugging me again.

Both beatings had been an exercise in self-control for me. I had to fight back enough to make it believable but I couldn’t use many of the moves that my various Sensei’s had drilled into me. Even worse I couldn’t use any of the dirty fighting techniques that the MI6 trainers had us practice until they were almost hard wired in muscle memory. In addition, I had needed to fool Dominic into thinking that I’d been broken to his will without actually losing my self-determination or becoming injured enough that I couldn’t function. All and all the experience had been mentally not to mention physically exhausting.

I wondered how long I could lie on the bed pretending to sleep. Long enough to get most of the drugs out of my system perhaps? Probably not. I’d been drugged at least four times with god-only-knows what. Only thing I could tell was that it wasn’t straight opiates. Judging by the sluggishness of my thoughts I had enough residual effects to last for hours if not days.

How long had I been a captive? Estimating the times I’d been out due to the drugs, the bits where I’d been awake and when I’d passed out from Dominic’s beating it was somewhere about 36 hours. MI6’s average recovery time for agents was four to six days. So I needed to stay alive at least four more days. It might be on the shorter side if Sherlock and Mycroft were involved.

Average recovery time. I’d been trying to speed it up with judicious use of image processing technology. The CCTV recognition programs for both vehicles and people were coming along nicely. They were still a little buggy and prone to crash if too much data was fed into them. I’d need to look into increasing the buffer size and releasing the memory more quickly to stabilize them. If I made the buffer bigger then I could make...No. I should be concentrating on how to stay alive not attempting to craft bug fixes for a program I might never see again.

I’d need to cooperate and fool Dominic until they could come for me. Of course they’d come for me. I had more information and intelligence in my head than any agent as well as the ability to backdoor into most anything at MI6. Of course they’d be frantic to track and recover me. Oh. A more morbid thought crossed my mind. If they couldn’t get me back well then they’d need to eliminate me one way or another. Mycroft would be livid and Sherlock. Gods only knew how Sherlock would react to that eventuality. If worse came to worse I hoped Dr. Watson would be able to control him.

To recover me they’d need to locate me. Tracking. I’d been working with medical on a subcutaneous tracker. Only problems with imbedded trackers was that if they were strong enough you could pick them up with all sorts of equipment. Discovery of a signal would scream spy to most anyone and just get the agent killed. The one I had imbedded in my arm only had a range of two city blocks. Rather useless in the asset recovery department on the scales we were used to working. Hmmmm. Maybe I was going at it wrong. Make it a panic button type affair. Something the agent could trigger. That way they wouldn’t run around like a bloody electronic beacon until they wanted to. While I was at it how about adding a biometric sensor array? The Doctors were already playing with those to monitor recovery of injured agents who absolutely refused to stay put in Medical. That would include all of the double O’s and a good majority of the A list agents. I wonder if there is a way to rig something that triggered automatically if the biometrics got outside a certain range? A hand suddenly was placed on the back of my neck. Crap. I hadn’t even noticed the door opening while I was obsessing about recovery times and tech improvements.

“Well Ghost” Dominic’s voice was soft, “are you ready to cooperate now?”

At least he was calling me Ghost rather than Nigel, Nige or my alias Quinn. Any of the last three and I’d most likely get bashed around some more. I flinched and whimpered something that could be interpreted as an affirmative.

“Is that a yes?” he asked.

“What do you want,” I whispered. “Do you want to be dead?” Oh hell. Damn the drugs. That didn’t come out right. I cringed reflexively expecting pain.

He just laughed softly. “Oh no,” he said through chuckles. “If I had wanted to be considered dead there are plenty of people who I could get to do that. No I need your more specialized talents.”

That didn’t make sense. What in the blazes did he want me to do then? I made a questioning noise.

“I need you to remove some references to particular incidents and some names associated with those records from some rather specialized databases.” He paused momentarily, “I need you to do it in your normal, undetectable style.”

“Which ones?” I was still whispering.

“Oh, the MET of course,” he said flatly. “Somewhere in the home office, most likely MI5 and maybe even MI6.”

Uh Oh. I’d need to be careful. I couldn’t just say I’d do it even though I could. I needed to play for time. “I’ll need to look first,” I said. “NSY will be easy. MI5 will be a bit more challenging. I don’t know about 6 though,” I continued trying to sound hesitant.

“Tell me Ghost. Tell me why.” Dominic was still using his soft commanding tone of voice.

“About three years ago MI6 started beefing up their cyber security,” I explained. “They really took things up a notch after their building exploded. Rumor has it that they’ve been doing the same things I did for you to terrorist groups and organized crime.” I trailed off and closed my eyes. Maybe I could convince him that he needed me sober to do what he wanted me to do.

His hand, still on the back of my neck, tightened. “Ghost,” his tone held a note of warning.

It was rather strange attempting to explain what I’d been doing for the last three years from an outsider’s perspective. I knew what folks were saying. I had several white and grey hat hacker personas that I used just to keep track of such things. In fact, Q-Branch was seriously well connected for such a secure organization. Between the six of us active programmers we had some twenty odd handles in a variety of flavors. At least five of them were black, the most notorious one of that group happened to be mine.

The hand tightened more. I squeaked and continued, “They’ve been tracing and going after cyber intruders physically. People have disappeared.”

Oh people had been disappearing all right. At least four were enjoying rent free accommodations courtesy of Her Majesty and I’d hired another two. The latest one 003 had tracked all the way to Kazakhstan before finally eliminating him. Now catching and locating him had been a real challenge I closed my eyes and remembered.

A pinch. The low grade aches suddenly subsided. A rush of pleasurable sensation. I heard the door close. Shortly thereafter Dom sat down on the bed next to me. When had he moved? I had lost track. Drugs. Again. I’d zoned completely out. Bugger. I looked at Dom. He had a thoughtful expression that was a bit washed out by the florescent lighting in the room. He moved slightly as he looked back at me or was it the lighting flickering? No, it was the light. Some flickers were longer than others then there was a pause. Ones? Zeros? 100101. 37. 25 hexadecimal. Huh? Morse code? R..A..C..H..E..pause. I watched the patterns trying to make sense of them.

Dom slapped my face lightly, “Focus, Ghost.”

Shit. How long had I zoned out this time watching the lights flicker? “Eliminate impossible, improbable, truth,” I muttered trying to reorient myself.

Dom’s face was a study in confusion.

“The lights,” I continued. “The ballast is going. It’s reacting to voltage change in the crappy wiring. With that much variation I hope you have your electronics on a UPS.”

My mind was clearing rapidly. He must have given me something different this time. “What the hell did you give me?” I asked.

I was surprised when he replied, “Cocaine. It will let you concentrate.”

I wondered, “What strength?” Oops. I hadn’t meant that to be out loud. I’d have to watch myself carefully.

“A 4% solution,” Dom seemed to be amused most likely by the fact that I couldn’t seem to keep my thoughts to myself. I could play with that if I were careful.

“S..hirley,” I used the hated nickname for Sherlock to cover the fact that my brain to mouth filter didn’t seem to be completely active. “Always swore that 7% was optimum.”

“Shirley?”

“A friend,” I replied. I would call my half-brother a friend even if he didn’t really want to put me in that category. Shirley could also mean R. R was my friend though her opinion on drug use was quite different from Sherlock’s given that she’d dealt with the end results of overindulgence many times during her time working with the fire brigade before she was scooped up by MI6.

Dom put his hand on my neck again. On the front this time. “Just so long as you understand that you are mine. She can have no part of you anymore.”

Crap. He had interpreted my pause as reminiscing about a lover. That meant he still was on the possessive kick. Still trying the emotional angle. Attempting to put me back to my teenaged self. The kid who was enamored and under his thumb. I shuddered but not for the reason he thought and tried to look scared, “Yes Dom” was what I said.

He took his hand away from my neck and moved it down to grab my wrist. He stood up and tugged me up with him. I swayed a bit but found my balance. My mind was clear now. I think I had a handle on what came out of my mouth. My body was still fighting the effects of the opiates although the cocaine seemed to be helping with that too.

“Come,” he ordered releasing me.

I followed him out of the room, staggering from my prison down a hall into another room. It had a rather advanced desktop with several screens set up on a table made of sawhorses with a door on top. There was what looked like a T-1 line that snaked along the floor into the wall.

Dominic noticed my interest. “It’s hard connected into a university node,” he commented.

I looked at Dom. “Go,” he ordered “Do what you do best Ghost.”

I moved to the computer. Let’s see just what I have here. I let the machine boot up. As I examined the set up hardware, software and interface I kept up a running semi-monologue. I’d perfected the technique with M, the old M, and Major Bootheroid. Neither of them had understood half of what I was talking about but it tended to make them feel like they knew what I was doing. It also at the time seemed to make them go away and leave me to my own devices more quickly than otherwise. Dom had a better understanding of computers and programing so I’d need to be more careful but I hoped the result would be the same.

My mind quickly focused on the task at hand. I understood now why Sherlock’s drug of choice had been Cocaine. It was allowing me to shut out all the extraneous distractions and concentrate my entire intellect exclusively on what I was doing.

“This is going to be tricky,” I commented. “I’m going to need to set up some proxys, reroute signal traffic and hijack some major processing power. I’m also going to need some serious tools.” I paused for effect. “Luckily I know where to get them. Do you mind if I resurrect my old handle?”

“Will it speed things up?”

“Yes.” Potentially. It also might tip off someone in MI6 and if Sherlock or Mycroft were involved either of them would associate that handle with Dominic.

“This is going to take me a bit to set up properly before I can even attempt to see what the MET has on its servers. From there I’ll jump to MI5 and maybe extrapolate to see what, if anything 6 has.”

I took a glance to see how Dominic was taking my words. He didn’t look too pleased but he was following my line of reasoning. I could almost see him balancing whatever his timetable was with his need for secrecy. “How fast?” he asked finally.

“Six to eight hours to set up. Once that’s done a couple hours to do the initial hacks.”

“Then?”

“Then I’ll have an idea of how long it will take to do what you want.” There it was. Would he buy it or would he try and force faster work? Would I have enough time to insert underlying code in my hacks or would I really need to erase data to save my skin?

“Hmph,” Dominic grunted. “Do it.”

I turned back to the machine and started. This was going to be work.

Food appeared at my elbow and I ate it. Occasionally a cup of mediocre coffee would show up. I drank that for the liquid and caffeine. At one point I realized that the mental clarity was waning. I made a vague request then for “tea, earl grey” and was pleasantly surprised when a large mug of same showed up.

Some five hours later I had a decent array of tools and was starting in on setting up my spoofing system. I had also learned a number of interesting things. Judging from system times and dates I had lost eight hours in personal time. That meant I’d been missing for just under 48 hours. Dominic also had a real time data logger program on the machine. I presumed that there was a person somewhere monitoring activity to make sure I wasn’t calling for help or otherwise sabotaging what I was supposed to be doing. When I really got going he or she would have a fun time keeping up if the reactions of the rest of Q-Branch were any indication. Shirley always said that watching the code I produced while hacking gave her vertigo. The T-1 line hooked directly into a node dedicated to the University of London. Nice. At least I was still in the city. Physically I knew I was close to the node because there was no serious signal degradation but I didn’t want to try and narrow it down just yet. My unknown watcher would surely alert Dominic if I attempted to pin down my location.

Another couple hours of work and I was almost ready. I had planned to hack into my home servers and use them remotely to get at the MET and MI5 databases. I’d leave MI6 alone to start with. I needed to do some serious thinking about how best to preserve the real data while fooling Dom and his watcher into thinking I was destroying the evidence he wanted trashed.

Just about that time I realized I was sitting just staring at the computer. My hands were shaking slightly and I felt a little queasy. I took a look at the time. I’d been at it for only eight hours. I usually didn’t start getting physical fatigue symptoms for at least 15. Had the food been off? I realized that I had broken out in a cold sweat as my stomach started to cramp. I put my head on the makeshift desk and attempted to ride it out. I must have made some sort of noise or they were monitoring me via camera because it was only a minute or two before the door opened and Dom trailed by a beefy bodyguard type entered.

It felt like too much of an effort, not to mention the potential pain, to raise my head so I just watched him come. He motioned the bodyguard who grabbed me and pinned me upright in the chair. Dom reached out and held my chin looking closely at my eyes.

“I was afraid of this,” he remarked to the man holding me. He released my chin, walked to the door and yelled out it, “Rheese, get dose of the prime stock and bring it here.”

I shivered under the bodyguard’s hands. The shaking feeling was definitely getting worse. In addition, it felt like something was crawling up my legs. I suddenly made the connection. Withdrawal symptoms. Oh wonderful.

Dom came back toward me holding a syringe. Despite the side effects I really didn’t want to be drugged again so I threw myself sideways twisting out of the bodyguard’s grip. I ended up on the floor. I rolled getting my feet under me and made a break for the open door. Unfortunately upon clearing the door I ran straight into the back of the man, Rheese, who had delivered the drugs. We went down in a heap. He was larger than I and heavier. My efforts to squiggle free were unsuccessful and he managed to immobilize me.

“Boss?” he asked Dom who was exiting the room.

“Hold him still.” Dominic knelt down and grabbed my nearest arm.

“Why?” I asked him.

“I can’t afford to have you incapacitated for that long Ghost,” he replied as he injected me.

It didn’t take long for the effects to set in. My body relaxed and stopped shaking. I closed my eyes. The mental fuzziness returned and I felt like I was floating. Someone picked me up.

“We’ll need to alternate with the Cocaine,” I felt the voice as well as heard it. Rheese was carrying me then.

“Figure out how to keep him able to work for as long as possible. Try 7% on the Cocaine solution,” Dominic ordered.

“Yes Boss,” was the reply.

I heard a door open. I was placed on a bed and covered. Back into my prison then. A hand gripped my hair and tugged just enough to be almost painful.

“Don’t think you won’t pay for that little escape Nigel,” Dominic purred. “Punishment is merely delayed.”

Oh lovely, I thought as the drugs took me under.


	8. Raid

In my experience interagency operations, like multinational ones, tend to be a major pain in the arse. Even if the rank and file can cooperate there usually at least one martinet who tries to take over and run the entire show even though it would be more efficient, logical and jurisdictionally correct for someone else to do so. This inevitably leads to a territorial conflict that at best negatively impacts efficiency and at the worst results in a FUBAR situation. 

When we walked into the warehouse that was being used as a staging area the Chief Superintendent of NSY was standing in front of a group of policemen some in plain clothes others not. I noticed that Lestrade was among them. Think of the devil and he appears was my first thought. The Chief Superintendent did not look pleased. His face when he spotted Sherlock and I as we entered behind Bond became even more infuriated. He opened his mouth apparently to make some sort of comment about our presence but before he could do so his eyes tracked to someone behind us. His eyes widened and he shut his mouth without saying anything. 

Abagail brushed passed me and stalked up to the Chief Superintendent. She was wearing khaki trousers and a light jacket over a non-regulation light blue shirt that was undoubtedly silk. She looked like a Vogue interpretation of special forces right down to the firearm in the holster on her hip. The only thing that was not fashion plate caliber was the fact that she was wearing well-worn boots as opposed to the three inch stilettos that a fashion photographer would have used. I wasn’t close enough to hear what she said but the results were impressive. The Chief Superintendent went white, then red, then turned on his heel and left the building not saying a word to anyone.

I glanced across the room at Lestrade. He looked surprised. I turned to Sherlock and saw that he was amused. I raised an eyebrow at him. He responded, “It seems that you are not the only one who has had a physical altercation with the Chief Superintendent.” He was referring to the time I’d been arrested just after punching the man in the face. That had been just before…no I wasn’t going to dwell on that.

Abagail had turned around and was close enough to overhear Sherlock’s comment. She smiled slightly, “I merely restrained his overzealous reactions.” 

“Presumably by making him intimately acquainted with the floor knowing your basic training,” James interjected.

Hmmm. Abagail must be former MI6 then. She grinned back at James. It looked like she was going to say something when another group of people entered the warehouse. “Ah, the MI6 contingent,” she murmured as the head of the group and a man carrying a duffel walked up to us. 

“Commander,” the taller of the two saluted Bond then nodded at Abagail, “Mam.”

“Elton, George” James acknowledged.

“I have Sam, Leonard, Chris, Trevor and Liz with me,” Elton reported. “004 is setting up a sniper position on the front of the building and George here will take the back when we’ve got you outfitted.”

Lestrade sauntered up as George put down the duffel and briefly rummaged around in it coming up with a small box. He opened it and I could see it had a bunch of small devices nestled in foam padding. He fished two out and handed me one. “Earwig,” he said shortly. “And microphone transmitter,” he added attaching a small button like device to my collar. He did the same to Sherlock, Lestrade and Abagail. He went back to the duffel stowing the now empty box and coming up with a larger box. He once again stood in front of me and opened it. I tried not to react. Nestled in the box was my Sig and its magazine. Since this was going to be a joint operation with the MET I had left it at home to avoid any unpleasant questions that might arise.

“Commander Bond recommended and M confirmed that you should be armed for the remainder of this operation,” he managed to keep a straight face. It was clear from the slight crinkles around his eyes that he knew full well he was handing me my own weapon and thought it screamingly funny.

I took the Sig, loaded it and chambered a round. He then handed me a new concealed holster which would allow me to carry it at the back of my waist. I got it quickly settled and even managed to say “Thank you,” without losing my composure. I took a quick glance around to see how this development was being received. Sherlock, of course, had deduced the charade in an instant. Abagail was ignoring it, typing on her Blackberry. Lestrade was carefully not looking at the entire handoff. He was clearly taking the approach that what he didn’t directly see he couldn’t testify about. James winked at me. I knew then just who had orchestrated this little bit of theatre.

Well, Well. My gun was now MI6 sanctioned at least for a little while. How good that mandate was, given that MI6’s jurisdiction was primarily abroad, I wasn’t about to ask. Hopefully it would be good enough to take care of any issues if I used it.

“Good morning, can we have a com check for those just joining us?” said a female voice in my ear. It wasn’t Shirley. The voice was lower in pitch and had a slight accent I couldn’t place.

“Morning Monneypenny,” James’ voice oozed charm.

“Eve,” said Abagail at almost the same time.

“007. Abagail,” she acknowledged.

I knew the drill, “Watson.”

Lestrade chimed in after and Sherlock harrumphed.

“Thank you gentlemen. Mr. Holmes,” said Eve. I had to repress a smile. This Monneypenny had class. Too bad her polite snub would be completely ignored by Sherlock if he had even recognized it for what it was.

“Levels adjusted,” said a male voice this time. “Detective Inspector,” the voice continued, “If you need to be patched into the MET radio frequency for this operation just say MET and I’ll enable that function.”

So if I remembered the conversation from last night that would be either Spider or Tanner.

“Thank you Spider,” said Eve. “Are we ready?”

“Give me three to get to the roof and five to set up and they’ll be good to go.” George zipped the duffel, settled the strap over his shoulder and took off at a trot.

“My people will need five to seven to get in place,” Lestrade commented as he motioned the MET personnel to go and set up. They scattered out various exits in ones and twos. 

The raid went smoothly. Less than 30 minutes later we had the staff of the delivery company rounded up and cleared the building. Sherlock had taken a close look at some of the equipment in the mechanic’s bay as well as rifled through some paperwork in the manager’s office. His eyes were bright and his body language indicated to me that he had made some major deductions.

We ended up in the main loading area where the MI6 agents were guarding the staff. Sherlock looked the employees over then focused in on a gentleman who from the grease stains on his hands must be the mechanic.

“So how often do you lend out the trucks?” he asked the man.

The mechanic gaped at him “How? What?” before he managed to gather his wits and shut his mouth with an audible snap.

“You also let someone borrow your tools.” Sherlock stated flatly. “Who is it?”

The mechanic’s eyes widened. He clenched his jaw but didn’t say anything.

“So what type of hold does he have on you? Wife? No, she’s left you. Child?” I could tell that Sherlock was watching the man’s reactions intently. “Ah, yes. He threatened your child who is staying with your sister in Dorsett.”

Only about half of that was pure deduction. The rest he had gleaned from the files R had provided.

“Bastard” the man muttered. I couldn’t tell if the remark was directed at Sherlock or a comment about the person applying the pressure.

“I’d appreciate a name,” Sherlock continued expectantly.

“Bet it was his mate Travis,” said one of the drivers suddenly from the back of the group of employees. 

Lestrade moved quickly in front of the driver and snarled “Spill it.”

“Travis Wilson.” The driver looked a bit frightened by Lestrade’s vehemence. “He’d hang around on and off. Be around for a week then gone for a bit. Flashy dresser, always had money. I figured Bret let him use his tools and the shop area in exchange for Travis buying drinks.” 

The manager made an exasperated noise just then. Apparently that wasn’t something that he had not known was going on and he didn’t like it one little bit. Looking at his face as he glared at the mechanic I don’t even think he had realized he had made any noise.

Moneypenny’s voice came over the coms just then, “We have a civilian headed in your direction. He should be entering the back door approximately 15 seconds from my mark.” There was a short pause. Sherlock, Bond, Lestrade and I were the only ones to look at the door. The MI6 agents kept their eyes on the employees. “Mark,” she said.

15 seconds later the back door opened and a bloke with a familiar looking face peered around the door frame. Immediately upon seeing the scene he took off running. What happened next would have rivaled an action sequence in an American television series. Without any consultation Bond sprinted left heading for the exit. At the exact same instant Sherlock ran right aiming for an open loading door and I, with Lestrade hot on my heels, charged at the door the bloke had just slammed shut behind him. 

When Lestrade and I exited into the alley Moneypenny’s voice said “Left.” We both immediately turned left and charged around the corner only to find the bloke flat on his face with James’ knee in the middle of his back; the barrel of a Walther pressed to the back of his neck. 

Moments later Sherlock came pounding around the other corner. He looked down at the man with slight disgust and said “Quasi-ambidextrous. Trained right-handed.”

I must have seemed confused about that particular non-sequitur because Sherlock immediately explained, “When fleeing most people will make the first turn in the direction of their dominant hand. Mr. Wilson here, as I can tell from his hands, writes with his right hand but otherwise uses both equally thus making the direction he took less obvious to predict.” Ah, I understood then. Sherlock was upset that he had not correctly predicted the direction the man would run. 

In the meantime James had been searching his prisoner’s pockets and tossing items to Lestrade as he extracted them. A wallet, a ring of keys, and a cell phone were all tossed to Lestrade. James fished out another key on a fob but this one was intercepted by Sherlock in mid-air. He looked at the key then made that self-satisfied exhalation that meant a chain of deduction had been followed to a successful conclusion. “We are looking for a white Ford mini-van with an extra row of seats, plate number LD60VQP.” 

“Somewhere in Stonebridge,” commented Lestrade earning him a sharp look from Sherlock. Before Sherlock could make any comment Lestrade waived Mr. Wilson’s mobile at him and grinned. “He got a text late last night to go pick it up in Stonebridge at the usual place.”

“What’s the number of that mobile?” Spider’s voice asked.

Lestrade rattled it off.

There was a short pause. “Text came from a burn phone. It’s not on currently. I’m tracing the origin of the text back to the original cell. I’ll get back to you shortly.” 

Bond took his knee out of Wilson’s back and unceremoniously hauled him to his feet. “Elton,” he spoke softly. “Come collect this package and place it with the other one so we can see if there is any useful information to be had.” From the tone of James’ voice it was clear that Mr. Wilson and his accomplice would be divulging any information they might have in short order. 

It was only a minute or so before Elton and one of the other agents came to collect. Lestrade looked a little sour at the prospect of leaving the suspects to the tender mercies of MI6 but he didn’t object. Ah the wonders of inter-agency cooperation and the convoluted workings of the Terrorism Act or whatever they’d use to justify their actions. I supposed that they could always hold him as a material witness in the kidnapping if nothing else.

“Got it,” Spider’s voice broke into my musings. He sounded satisfied as he recited a set of cross streets. “It’s in the back corner of the car park.” 

With that Sherlock took off like a shot in that long loping stride he used when he was in a hurry. James, Lestrade and I had to scramble to catch up. He was most likely going to hail a cab. Odds were that if he got too far ahead he’d just grab one and leave us standing. It was typical behavior for him when chasing a lead. Charge ahead and leave all the rest of us to trail along after as best we could.

Luckily Lestrade anticipated this and barked “Right. My car. It will be faster,” at Sherlock. In short order we had piled in, Lestrade driving, and were on our way. 

Sherlock was practically vibrating with tension. He’d been this way on and off since Quentin had been taken. I could tell that the personal nature of the case was causing quite a bit of extra stress as he struggled to keep his sentiment from clouding his intellect. Every so often the sentiment would break through making him jittery as he struggled to control it again. I figured it was up to me to distract him a bit. Give him something to focus on, even if it happened to be annoyance with me.

“How did you come up with the tag number Sherlock,” I asked even though I had a suspicion that he’d somehow gleaned it from the papers he’d looked through in the company offices.

“It was on the paperwork.”

I gave him my best please enlighten me with your brilliance looks.

Sherlock cocked his head, narrowing his eyes at me. He was suspicious of my asserted ignorance but he complied. “It was obvious. In the office there were several work orders for vehicles that the mechanic had been working on for other local firms. Only one of those had a phone message dated yesterday attached inquiring as to the status of the repairs. There was a post-it note with grease stains on top of that message with a note the part hadn’t come in yet but while we were in the mechanics’ bay there was a box from Ford which had been delivered two days ago sitting under some other older boxes. To keep the van from being noticed as missing the mechanic ordered an unnecessary part as an excuse to allow it to be used for several days without anyone being the wiser.”

“Would have worked if Mr. Wilson hadn’t been lazy and gone and picked up the van last night,” Lestrade chimed in.

“Oh, he was shagging his cocktail waitress girlfriend last night which is why he didn’t go and get it. He showed up at the courier office with the intent to have the mechanic go and get it for him.” Sherlock was matter of fact. I didn’t doubt his deductions for a minute.

“I’m not going to ask you to explain how you got that,” was Lestrade’s comment as he slewed the car around a corner and pulled into the car park.

“Smell of her body wash or some such,” I commented.

“Perfume actually,” he muttered.

“Always something,” I said low enough for only him to catch it and smiled.

Sherlock gave me an exasperated look at my tossing his own phrases back at him. His body language screamed annoyed. Well at least he wasn’t shaking any more.

We piled out and found the van easily enough. James jimmied the lock while Sherlock examined the undercarriage and the tires. I knew he was looking for mud and other indications of just where this van had been. In the meantime James, Lestrade and I took a quick look inside. We found a blanket folded on the back seat a disassembled mobile in the glove box and another that was under one of the middle row of seats. 

“We are going to need forensics to tell if this was used to transport Q,” Lestrade said conversationally. “DNA analysis will take a while even if we get some good samples.”

“That’s his,” James said as he pointed to the mobile under the seat. 

“But was he with it at the time it got into this van?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Sherlock as he removed some fibers from the van’s door locking mechanism with a biro he’d filched a moment before from my pocket without my noticing. “It’s Welsh wool, hand spun from the jumper he was wearing when he was grabbed. From its position in this was snagged as he was removed from the vehicle.” 

Sherlock paused thinking, then went very still. He looked, just for an instant, worried. I knew then that he had calculated the force necessary to snag that bit of wool on the door and it must have been substantial. Lestrade backtracked to his car and fetched several evidence bags. Sherlock used one of them to hold the fibers officially giving custody of the evidence to Lestrade.

Sherlock sighed and looked frustrated. “It’s either lack of data or too much data,” he muttered then added, “This van has been all over the southern suburbs. I recognize soil from at least four different areas, all of which are kilometers from each other and from here.” 

James in the meantime had donned gloves and extracted both mobiles and their batteries. He was reassembling both of them. Once that was done he turned them on. “Spider?” he asked once they both had completely booted up.

“One moment 007,” came Shirley’s voice. “We are changing the watch over on this end.” 

I glanced at Lestrade. He looked pained. He was still was upset that Shirley hadn’t revealed her true employer. I caught Sherlock glancing at Lestrade too, a momentary flash of concern on his face. Whatever anyone else thought I knew that Sherlock was no sociopath. A sociopath would not care a whit about a friend’s happiness and it was obvious to me that Sherlock cared. From the look on his face I could see that I was going to have to have a talk with Sherlock soon about the fact that it was not good for him to interfere in Lestrade’s relationship issues.

“What can I do for you 007?” Shirley sounded calm, cool and professional.

“Can you remotely access the passive tracking feature on Q’s mobile?”

“I’ll see,” she replied then added, “You might want to put it down while I do this. He’s rigged it to explode if it is not accessed properly.”

“I’ll chance it,” Bond replied.

I looked around confused. “I thought phones couldn’t be tracked if the battery was removed.”

“Normal phones, no.” It was Shirley’s voice sounded a bit distracted. 

James chimed in “We’ve been equipping our high value potential targets with ones that store location data on a separately powered circuit for a while now.” 

It made sense. MI6 Quartermaster was a high value target for both domestic and international terrorists as well as for a variety of nations who would just love to get a back door into SIS. The mention of explosives was not much of a surprise either.

“Got it,” Shirley voice was matter of fact. “I assume you want a list of all stops over a minute or two.”

“Yes” was Bond’s reply.

“Sending coordinates to your mobile now.”

Lestrade tossed his car keys at Bond. “Here, take my car. I have to oversee the forensics team anyway. I’ll hitch a lift back to the Yard with them. Just bring it back in one piece.”

Shirley made a strangled noise over the com. 

I wasn’t quite sure what that was all about but James had a slight smirk on his face as he said “Thank you”. Greg didn’t seem to notice since he was dialing his mobile presumably to get a team on site.

We left Greg to his evidence collection and spent the next two hours tracing Q’s cell phone backward from the car park. It was late afternoon by the time we arrived at a gravel lot next to a pub in some benighted suburb I was getting discouraged. 

Sherlock took a look around like he had at all the other stops but this time he huffed out his breath and said, “Here. They made the switch here.”

“Are you sure?” asked a male voice. 

Tanner my brain supplied the name. He was sharing watch with Shirley.

“Yes.” Sherlock snapped.

“We’ll download the feed from the CCTV,” was his reply.

We waited. 

“We’ve got video of the transfer,” Tanner’s voice was flat over the com. “They transferred what looks like a body wrapped in a blanket from the van to a black SUV.” 

Sherlock’s jaw clenched momentarily as he fought down emotion. He recovered himself with a small shake of his head and said “I’ll need to see that. I might be able to determine if it was indeed Quentin and if so his condition.” I could tell that he was attempting to not get ahead of the data but from the look on his face he was seriously afraid that his brother was dead.


	9. Laboro

Something brushed my nose. I moved my hand to intercept it without opening my eyes but didn't encounter anything. Damn. I was still under the influence of the opiate and my reaction times were seriously impaired. I let my hand flop to the duvet. Moments later there it was again. A feather light touch on my nose. I cracked open my eyes. Oh great, now I was hallucinating.

I had been lying on my side in the bed facing the wall. I was still doing so but on the bed in between me and the wall was a mint green hedgehog shaped lump with stylized rabbit ears. I closed my eyes and opened them again. It was still there.

"Oh," it said very softly, "You'd prefer something more traditional?" It morphed then into a male form with gossamer wings. It was the prototypical fantasy book cover version of a fairy except it was male. It was still green and still had tiny rabbit ears.

"I've been sent by a friend," it continued, "to tell you that your brother, his friend and your spy are getting close. Just manage not to get killed in the next 12 to 24 hours and you'll be OK."

Oh boy, my subconscious was going overboard with telling me what I wanted to hear. There was a rattle from the door as the lock thunked open.

The fairy made a gesture reminiscent of pulling something out of a trouser pocket. That was strange since the form was completely nude. It then looked down at its hand which now contained what looked like an old-fashioned pocket watch. "I'm late!" It exclaimed. "Got to go! Keep calm and carry on and all that." It winked out like someone had blown out a candle.

I put my hand over where the hallucination had been. There was a distinct cold spot on the duvet. Wow, even tactile components. I must really be out of it.

A voice came from the doorway. "Whatcha looking at mate?"

It was Rheese. He was the closest thing Dom had to a drug expert. I decided to answer just in case what I was experiencing was some sort of indicator of a bad reaction.

"Either a hallucination or someone has installed a very high end holographic projector in here."

Rheese made a derisive noise, "Hallucination. Interesting. You must be sensitive to the blend. Shouldn't make a difference one way or the other though."

He sat down on the bed and rolled me over. Before I could react he pinned me down with his body then hit me with one of the pen injectors. Ah, so Rheese was the creator of the lovely epi-pens with the definitively nonstandard payloads. Judging by the rush this one was filled with cocaine. Given the way the cocaine had affected me before I was going to have to keep my mouth shut for at least then next little bit.

I was surprised when Rheese didn't leave me. He just sat on the edge of the bed watching. His expression was thoughtful. Finally he spoke, "I always wondered what Dominic saw in you. He talked about you occasionally, you know. When he thought you were dead."

Oh? That was interesting. I wondered what he said. Maybe I could get Rheese to tell me. "Ummm?"

"It was sort of strange being jealous of a dead man," he continued. "You really can't compete with a memory. Now you are here, alive, and he still wants you. I'm really not sure what I want to do about that."

I didn't need to be Sherlock to deduce that he was Dominic's latest lover. From the tone of his voice he thought I was a competitor for Dom's affections. Wonderful. Was he really jealous or was this just some twisted mind game of Dom's to determine my feelings? Even if he was being honest I suspected that the room was wired for sound. I knew there was a camera.

As if he read my mind Rheese spoke again, "Don't worry, I turned off the monitoring. This little conversation is private. Just you and me."

I still didn't know if I believed him but I decided to give a little. "I'm more like a possession to him," I rasped.

"Oh yes," he replied, "a possession that needs to be thrown in the bin when its usefulness is at an end."

Great, he'd be trying to convince Dom to get rid of me permanently once I'd completed my task. In fact if Rheese had his way I'd be dead already. I suspected that if he thought he could get away with it he'd kill me himself. Could I talk him out of it? A quick glance at his face and I concluded probably not. Well I'd just have to see if I could discourage him from taking precipitous action and hope for either rescue or a chance to escape.

"I have a couple of bits of unsolicited advice for you," I started. "Don't disappoint him. It will be unpleasant and whatever you do don't let him discover you are responsible for taking his toys away." What I didn't add was that he'd probably not survive the results of the latter.

"Whatever," he grumbled at me then got to his feet. "Come along Nigel," he grabbed my arm and hauled me upright, "time to get to work."

A short while later I was back in front of the computer. The initial cocaine buzz had worn off and I was left with that strange ability to focus. If last time was any judge I had 8 to 9 hours of clarity before I crashed. I could get a hell of a lot done in that time period.

First things first. Back into my home servers. Ah, looking at the logs I could see that Shirley had been in mucking about. She'd lifted the program that back-doored into Dr. Watson's laptop. Good. That meant Sherlock was working this. Hmm, did she leave me any presents? There it was a hidden bit of coding that would trip an alarm if I used the servers in certain configurations. Nice bit of programing girl.

A bit of coding on my own took care of the alarm. It would now stay silent until I triggered it. I then set things up so that she could still get in and see what I was doing but not have any effect on it. Next I set up a search and destroy worm with the applicable terms in it. I needed the program as window dressing. I needed it to erase certain information even though at the same time it was retaining a secret clean copy of the original. Canibalizing from some of my other search algorithms made short work of that. Finally I made it look like I was setting up to hack my cover identity's erstwhile employer Universal Exports.

Step two. Co-opt for my own use the Universal Export servers that we kept for show. I dropped in from my servers, intentionally setting off Shirley's alarm in the process, and started. I hacked past the firewalls at warp speed. I segregated a good chunk of memory and partitioned it off from the rest of the work servers. Now to snag some processing power and make these servers look like the MET's and MI5's backup location. I was working as fast as the keyboard could take input. I even had to stop and increase the buffer size to avoid losing lines of code. Take that you nosey little bitch or bastard. I hope that gave you a headache. I wondered if Shirley was watching too. If so sorry about the nausea I thought briefly.

Now for the tricky part. I'd need to confuse my unknown watcher for long enough to start the MET and MI5 backup's running. Once that was started it didn't matter if my watcher tried to stop the process. I'd built in safeguards. The real danger, however, was Dominic. I just hoped I'd be able to get a word in edgewise and that he wouldn't just kill me out of hand. Execute. I pushed a key. Oh, bad pun. A giggle slipped out. Hopefully it wouldn't come to that.

It took 10 minutes before Dominic and one of his burly bodyguards walked in the door. "What exactly are you doing Nige?" His voice was deeper than normal. I knew the tone. He tended to use it just before things got very violent. This was going to be close.

"Running a full backup of the MET and MI5," I kept my voice firm, not subservient. It was the voice I used when a mission went tits up. Calm, cool, completely in control. He'd never heard that from me before. It was different enough that it should cause him to pause before beating the shit out of me.

"Why?"

"Tampering with the active files wouldn't work, especially if you want this to go unnoticed."

"So?" His voice was still in that deeper range.

Here it was. I'm not a very good liar in person so when I do lie I try to do so by omission and with as many truths as possible. "So, I run a full backup and change the data in that backup copy." True but I also retain the original backup unmodified. "I replace the last system backup with my modified backup and then go in and take the entire network down. When they get it running they will load from the most recent backup. Oh and by the way the last few prior backups," with the exception of my unmodified copy sitting on the Universal Export servers, "will have some errors so they won't be usable. Such a shame."

"And MI6?" Dominic's voice was a bit friendlier now.

I snorted, "I'm going to convince them that their data has been compromised and they'll erase it for you themselves."

"How do you plan to pull that off Ghost?"

I was back to being Ghost. He was buying it. I giggled under my breath probably ruining the calm, collected impression I was going for. "I'm going to go in and leave footprints all around looking like someone had inserted the information you want removed. When I take the MET and 5 down I'll launch a hack on MI6 and let them catch it." Nothing easier than triggering one's own alarms. "The payload on the hack will be more insertions which should tip them off to look at the other information. With a bit of investigation they'll conclude its fake and either toss it or flag it as suspect."

"Can you get in to set it up without tipping off all those super hackers you told me they hired?" Dom was skeptical.

I looked at him then with my best cocky grin. "I only will have to do it once. Fudging logs first. I'll let them catch it on my way out, but it will look like I'm heading in instead." That wasn't the most cogent explanation I'd ever given. I giggled again, out loud this time. There went the professional image completely. I was hoping that he'd think it was the drugs.

Dominic walked over, grabbed my chin and looked me in the eyes. "You get seriously manic when you are high Ghost."

"You just noticed? You see but you don't observe!" Oh crap, I was channeling Sherlock. I'd better shut up before I got myself killed.

"How long?"

I turned my chin out of his hand and looked at my monitor. "Backups should be finished in an hour or so, approximately 17:00 gmt." Blast! Used the wrong terminology. Military clock and specified time zone classic law enforcement speak. If he caught that I'd have to pass it off as a result of the multinational multi time zone nature of my erstwhile employer. "Another couple of hours to run the scrubber program and reinsert the backup files. The server take down is a modified scrip-kiddie virus that I can set to trigger whenever. Given the rumored expertise on the other end of the pipe I'll need to be actively running the MI6 hack."

"Hmph," Dominic's grunt was noncommittal as he thought. "Good," he finally said. "Set it all up but don't trigger anything yet."

"Ok," I started to turn back to the monitor set up then turned back as if I'd thought of something. "You might want to give your watcher the night off. I'm going to be using stuff that is most likely way over his or her head and you don't want to be coming in here every hour or so when they panic because they don't understand what I'm doing." It was a calculated risk. If I could get rid of my watcher then I had a good chance of pulling things off without serious damage to any of the agencies involved.

"So you figured that out." Dominic shook his head in mock exasperation, "Clever boy, I expected you would. How do you know this will be over their head?"

I gritted my teeth at the _clever boy_ sobriquet. That particular label raised all sorts of unpleasant memories. "If you'd had someone good enough you wouldn't have gone to all the trouble to acquire me," I replied switching back to my on mission voice.

"True," he said. "The logs remain though and if you need a second on the actual hack you can have him."

"Not necessary." Well that was better than I'd hoped. Now I could insert messages without having to cypher in my head and then provide a decryption program. Assuming of course that Dominic wasn't lying through his teeth. Ok, I'd use a simple substitution code. I could do that at speed and the code breaking programs Shirley had available would crack it in less than 5 minutes. I turned back to the computer and started to code.

"I'm going to be boring for a while," I commented as an aside to whomever was still paying attention. I needn't have bothered. Dominic was on his way to the door. I'd give it a half-hour or so and throw something strange at my unknown watcher to see if they were still on the case. If nothing happened I could then do what I wanted to do. Odds were that no-one would look at the keylogs at all.

Back to the grind. It took several hours but the backup and modifications went smoothly. I spent another couple hours locally setting up something that looked like my MI6 data fudging operation. I was betting most everything on someone in MI6 monitoring the live feed from my home servers. While I was coding I put in a variety of messages in as useless loops of code that didn't really do anything. I would pause before I typed a message to hopefully catch someone's attention.

Play along and let things happen, was the first coded message followed by Siblings having problems? Restore from UE instead of local. Fight me when I attack, was the third.

Just before 21:00 I was ready to reinsert the changed backups into MI5 and NSY. I stashed the unchanged copies on the MI6 Universal Export servers. The script virus was ready to go and I had the tools I needed to assault MI6. I hoped that Shirley would figure out the plan from my messages and by watching what I was setting up. I'd tried to be as obvious as I could. Well it would either work or it wouldn't and I didn't have much time before the withdrawal would set in so I started reinserting the fake backups.

When I got into the MI5 server to insert the flawed backup I noticed a new small file sitting in an incremental backup position. Its time stamp wasn't in the usual sequence for incremental backup so I took a quick look. Hah! It was the same substitution code I'd used to send my messages. If you must brother, it read. I felt much better. Mycroft could always predict my strategies. He'd figured out what I was doing and would back me.

Dare I chance putting a reply in? Nope, I heard the door open. I closed the file and started backing out of the hack. Careful, careful. My fingers were starting to shake a bit and my stomach was queasy. Finally, I was out. I shut down.

As soon as the computer shut off Rheese grabbed me roughly out of the chair and hauled me to my feet. He twisted one arm up behind me and marched me back toward my room. We were met at the door by one of Dom's guards, a large burly fellow with a grip like a vice. Rheese handed me off and he immobilized me while Rheese injected me with more of the opiate mix. Here we go again I thought as the now familiar lassitude overcame me. I barely felt the guard push me into the room and guide me to the bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is an extra chapter post as a present to you gentle readers. Enjoy.
> 
> Laboro = To toil or work. To those who follow Hetalia - Yes, that is who you think it is. Of course since we are dealing with a rabbit like form I had to make the obvioius literary reference (Free plot bunny to a good home...how a particular bunny ended up changing color and becoming a famous literary character).


	10. Hunt

The three of us stood in that gravel car park and just looked at each other. James' jaw was set, Sherlock looked like he was going to rant about lack of data at any moment and I was frustrated enough to want to punch someone or something. It seemed as if just when we were making progress someone put up a road block.

"Why the paranoia and the extensive use of CCTV blind spots?" I muttered to myself. "What is Portier doing, trying to keep his people off the radar or something?" I came out of my thoughts to see Sherlock looking at me intently.

"The drug ring was a side business," Sherlock said suddenly. "Portier was borrowing the lorries to move people"

"Human trafficking or getting people in under the radar?" Bond mused then answered his own question, "He seems the type to do both depending upon market conditions."

"We need to get back," Sherlock stalked back toward Lestrade's car. "I can put my network on it."

"I'll interface with MI5 and see what they have on the trafficking issue," came Tanner's voice over the coms.

I started a little at that. I'd almost forgotten that we were all still wired for sound. I was very glad that we were a minute later when suddenly we all heard Shirley's excited voice, "He's alive. Q's alive! I'd know that style anywhere." Her initial outburst was followed shortly by, "Bastard. He's locked me out of his home server and co-opted my alarm but he's alive and coding!" I don't think she realized that she was broadcasting on a live feed.

"Can you back trace to his location R?" Bond snapped as he moved to the car. I was right behind him.

There was dead silence on the other end. Yep, I thought to myself, she didn't realize she'd broadcast that bit of exuberance.

Shirley recovered quite well. "Working on it 007," she replied in a much calmer tone.

We all piled into the car but waited to see if Shirley could give us a location. No such luck.

After a minute or two there was a muffled expletive in what sounded like Russian followed by "I'm not able to get a location fix. He's bouncing the feed off a whole host of proxy servers. Back tracking is going to take time."

"Roger that," Bond replied, "We'll head back toward Baker Street. Notify us if you get a location."

"Wait." Sherlock cut into the conversation, "do you know what he's doing?"

"I can see it but I'm not quite sure," Shirley replied. "It looks like he's hacked the Yard. He seems to have mucked around in their system files for a bit then he used it to backdoor MI5. Oh!" Shirley sounded surprised, "haven't seen that in a while."

"An anomaly?"

While Sherlock's computer skills were several orders of magnitude better than mine they were nothing compared to his brother. Q was a down right genius at this sort of thing and from what I'd gathered from Lestrade, Shirley was no slouch in that department herself. How Sherlock thought he was going to deduce something from Shirley's descriptions of Q's hacking I had no idea.

"No, just a modification of an old style attack used by a seriously gifted hacker called Ghost. He dropped out of sight some 10 years ago. Everyone figured he'd been nabbed because of a flaw in his protocols and I've not seen anything remotely similar until this." Shirley was matter of fact. "Interesting," she continued, "It looks like Q got ahold of the original coding and modified it."

I was watching Sherlock carefully. When Shirley mentioned Ghost he looked startled and grabbed for his phone. I expected him to start texting but instead he hit a speed dial button. It was apparently answered on the first ring because without preamble he said "Ghost is active." There was short pause to listen then, "I suggest you relocate." That was followed by, "Yes. No. Baker Street" and he rang off.

Both James and I were looking at Sherlock now, I with curiosity and Bond with speculation. He pocketed his mobile then settled into the back seat with his hands steepled in front of his face in his thinking pose. Well we wouldn't get much out of him until he'd chased down whatever chain of deduction had set him off. I looked at James who had clearly come to the same conclusion. He merely shrugged and started the car.

We passed most of the journey back in silence. It was somewhat of a surprise then when as we rounded the corner onto Baker Street to hear Mycroft's cultured voice on our earpieces.

"Sherlock."

Now wasn't that interesting. Mycroft was now using the coms. That meant he was most likely, given Sherlock's side of the phone call, physically at MI6. Oh I would bet that the spooks were absolutely thrilled at that little development.

"Yes," Sherlock replied without opening his eyes.

"I trust your judgment."

Sherlock only snorted in reply.

Several minutes later we were ensconced in what had become our usual places, Sherlock and I in our chairs James on the sofa, with tea all round. Sherlock had yet to say anything but for the exchange with his brother. Suddenly he stood up, walked to the kitchen and returned with a metal bowl. He then popped his earpiece out and took off the microphone put it down on the coffee table and motioned James and I to do the same. He then grabbed the old fashioned alarm clock which resided on the mantle, a memento from an early case of ours, wound it, set it down next to the earpieces and flipped the bowl upside down over the whole lot.

James looked at the setup and chuckled, "I usually drop them into a glass of champagne."

I just waited. It was clear Sherlock didn't want whatever it was he'd deduced broadcast over the coms.

"Dominic Greene," Sherlock intoned the name like it was something foul. "We find him and we'll find Q."

Bond's eyebrows went up. "Dominic Greene, scion of the Verdigris family cartel?" he asked.

Sherlock grunted an affirmative.

"From all reports he's a nasty piece of work. Escaped from Wakefield seven years ago and has been flying below the radar ever since. There has been some intelligence that he's been running logistics and enforcement activities behind the scenes for his father Charles," Bond stated, "but nothing directly on his current location. We only seem to find he was there after the fact."

"You run into him James?" I asked.

"No but I've tangled with the Verdigris on a variety of occasions, mostly to their detriment," he grinned nastily.

I glanced back at Sherlock. He looked like he wanted to murder someone. Somehow Quentin was linked to Ghost and Ghost was linked to this Dominic Greene. "So what's the connection?"

Sherlock's jaw tightened and he closed his eyes. I thought for a moment he was not going to reply but then he spoke.

"Ghost is an alias Quentin used in uni. He used it when he was involved with Dominic Greene. He got rid of both at the same time and hasn't used it, or the hacking style, since." Sherlock paused and I could tell he was getting ahold of his emotions. He continued, "The fact that he's using the style now is a message."

"Involved?" James asked before I had a chance to.

"Yes, romantically involved. He was 16 and Dominic was very charismatic and charming." Sherlock paused and added, "Also abusive." He pressed his lips together. "Sentiment," he almost spat the last word.

I understood now why Sherlock had not wanted to be overheard. He was protecting Quentin's personal details from his co-workers. Sherlock's avowed sociopath label had really taken a beating over the last few days.

"What now?" I asked.

Sherlock flipped the bowl back over and replaced the clock on the mantle. "Now, I contact my network and then we wait."

With that he whipped his mobile and started texting. After several minutes he stopped and settled back into his chair. From the look on his face, his posture and breathing I could tell he was accessing his memory palace. We would get nothing at all out of him until he finished or something that he considered important roused him from his introspection.

While we waited I grabbed my laptop. While I didn't expect any message from Quentin I wondered if, despite all the excitement at discovering he was alive, Tanner had sent the pictures of the vehicle transfer. He hadn't. I knew that Sherlock would want to see them eventually so what would be the fastest way to get them. Shirley would be busy watching whatever Q was doing so a message to her would most likely be ignored. Tanner was a possibility but I wondered if he would be inclined to share. No, my best bet was Mycroft since he seemed to have relocated to wherever the communications were being monitored from. I sent him a short text asking for the video feed. Less than five minutes later it was sitting on my computer. Bond and I proceeded to watch it several times to see if we glean anything. Other than a real good look at Mr. Portier we didn't unearth anything new.

It was a little over an hour and a half later when Sherlock opened his eyes and spoke. "I'm missing something," he complained.

James and I had given up looking at the TV feed by that time and had moved on to firearm care and maintenance. We worked mostly in silence. It had been a while since I had shared a gun kit but I quickly fell back into the rhythm of passing supplies back and forth when needed with only an outstretched hand or a grunt to indicate what was needed. Bond had reassembled his Walther returning it to its holster. I was a bit slower and was looking for the gun oil which had somehow migrated to the other end of the coffee table. James grabbed it and tossed it to me. I snagged it out of the air with my right hand and continued my task.

Sherlock sat bolt upright in his chair and said, "That's it!" He grabbed my laptop, fiddled with it a bit then exhaled suddenly with a soft "ha!"

I quickly reassembled my Sig. It was clear that Sherlock was onto something and we'd most likely be moving shortly. Sure enough he sat the laptop down and jumped to his feet. "Come along gentlemen we need to find Mr. Wilson's cocktail waitress girlfriend."

"What?" Bond asked clearly confused.

I however, was used to Sherlock's propensity to state his conclusions without any precatory explanation. I snorted as I got up and grabbed my jacket. "You'll enlighten us on the way I assume," was my comment.

"Mr. Wilson is more involved than we thought. He wasn't just the provider of transport," Sherlock noted on his way out the door. "He was also the first gentleman who looked at the flat with the estate agent in the afternoon before Mr. Portier and his boys showed up. I didn't recognize him because he was wearing shoes that had two different heel sizes. Just enough to throw off his posture and gait. I realized it was the same person when I saw him hold the door for the agent. Trained right hand dominant." I realized then that my right hand grab for the gun oil had given Sherlock's fantastic brain the nudge it needed to put things together.

By then we were out on the pavement. Sherlock raised his hand and a cab pulled up almost immediately. I still don't know quite how he does that. I've never seen anyone who can make a cab materialize from thin air better than Sherlock. As we piled into the cab Sherlock continued, "Wilson had his girlfriend staying with him for several days. It was obvious from the state of his cloths and the scent of her perfume. So, why would she stay with him, when it was clear that they weren't habitually cohabitating?" He looked at me expectantly.

"Because someone else was borrowing her flat?" I hazarded a guess.

"Exactly," Sherlock responded.

"How exactly do you propose to find her?" James asked.

"We'll start with Wilson's apartment," Sherlock looked expectantly at Bond.

James sighed and gave an address to the cabbie.

In short order we were deposited on a street corner. Sherlock raised an eyebrow at Bond.

"It's going to be under surveillance," James replied to the unasked question.

"Then we need a distraction," Sherlock said while pulling out his phone.

Ten minutes later found the three of us behind of a block of nondescript flats. Thanks to James leading us on a meandering course through alleys and back gardens we'd managed to arrive unobserved by the CCTV. Hopefully the bar fight that spilled out onto the street, which Sherlock somehow arranged to have instigated, would distract the physical watchers long enough for us to break into the building.

Mr. Wilson's flat was a typical bachelor abode. It was clear the girlfriend had attempted to impose some order in the few, three according to Sherlock, days she'd been there. Sherlock took a quick look around, nipped into the en suite then almost pounced on a duffle sitting on a chair. He rummaged around in it and came up with what looked like a bottle of perfume.

"She works within four blocks of Hyde Park Corner. It's a high class bar or club," he commented.

"Shoes?" I asked assuming that Sherlock had based his deductions on the lady's shoes which were sitting under the chair.

"And perfume," Sherlock replied. "Many of the upscale clubs require their wait staff to wear the same perfume to avoid olfactory clashes." He tossed the perfume bottle at me and I caught it. "We only need follow our noses to determine which one."

I smelled the perfume. James cocked his head at that then held out his hand for the perfume bottle. I handed it to him. He sniffed thought a moment then said, "The Whisky Mist in Mayfair."

At that Sherlock was out the door.

It was a Tuesday night, it was early and the club was not at all busy. Sherlock flashed an NSY ID card that he'd lifted from Lestrade at the manager while Bond chatted up the bar tender and I talked to the ex-infantry bouncer. Sherlock ended up with lady's full name and address. Bond and I ended up with a good bit of gossip and her dating history. She went by Crystal but her given name was Crystallyn. A gorgeous natural blond without a bit of sense when it came to men. According to the bouncer she tended to go for _bad boys_ with all the predictable results including beatings. Wilson, per the bartender, had been better than most of her _catches_ but still not someone who would treat her like she deserved. She had been completely under his thumb. Wouldn't hear a word against him from anyone. Given what her co-workers said it was I didn't find it surprising that she'd loan out her flat just on his say so alone.

By 22:30 we were off again heading for the lady's flat. Sherlock, taking a page from Bond's play book, had the cabbie drop us several streets away. We went in the rest of the way on foot once again doing our best to avoid the CCTV cameras.

The flat was located in an old Victorian mansion which had been subdivided. We entered through the back and quietly made our way to what had originally been the entrance hall but now served as a foyer to the flats. We had just made it to the base of the staircase when the sound of three muffled pops came from somewhere above us. I knew exactly what had made that sound, as did Bond and we took the stairs two at a time.

The door to Crystal's flat was just opening when I hit it slamming it into the person on the other side with his hand on the handle. Bond dove through the open door tackling the second person in the room. Whomever it was the bloke was a halfway decent fighter since he managed to keep James occupied in a rolling scrabbling wrestling match sending his gun flying. The third person was just turning away from the open window raising a gun, a gun complete with silencer to point directly at me. Which, of course, was when Sherlock jumped in through the window from the fire escape and grabbed his arm.

They struggled. The gun discharged into the floor. I hoped that there was no one in the flat below. I used the distraction to use the door to bash the person I had pinned to the wall again. At the same time James managed to knock his opponent out with a solid punch to the jaw. The gun fell to the floor with a thunk as Sherlock twisted his man's arm up behind his back in a submission hold forcing the man to his knees on the floor.

James rolled to his feet and reclaimed his Walther. He assessed the situation in a glance then said "Don't" to the man I had pinned behind the door.

"Zip ties, Watson's right jacket pocket" Sherlock commented to Bond.

James nodded and moved to extract them. He secured the man behind the door leaving me to assist Sherlock. Once our prisoners were tied and on the floor I had a chance to look around. There was one dead body on the floor in the main room. It was the ex-boxer, Bill Gardner. We found his compatriot, Mr. Cotton, dead in the bedroom.

Sherlock, who had entered the bedroom, looked around then cautiously approached the wardrobe. James caught his movement and moved to a position where he could have a clear line of sight to fire when Sherlock opened the wardrobe door. I moved to the other side so that we could open both wardrobe doors at the same time. Once I was in position Sherlock gave a short nod and we both yanked.

There was a high pitched squeak from inside and Sherlock moved to catch the body that almost fell out. It was a female, hands tied with a scarf and a knit cap pulled down over her eyes, effectively blindfolding her. She matched the description we had of Crystalyn.

Surprisingly Sherlock was making calming noises as he lowered her to the floor and held her while I removed the hat. She was sobbing quietly. As soon as I freed her hands she threw her arms around Sherlock's neck and started crying into his shoulder. If it wouldn't have traumatized her further I might have laughed at the look Sherlock shot me over her head. James was also having a problem with not laughing.

Somehow Sherlock managed to foist Crystalyn onto me. I quickly got the story out of her. She'd gone home to pick up some extra clothes for her stay at Wilson's flat. Portier hadn't been too pleased but had let her in to pick up a couple of things. While she was rummaging around Portier had suddenly run into the bedroom, grabbed her and tied her up telling her it was for her own safety. She then had heard several pops followed by the noise of our precipitous entry into the flat and the fight that followed.

Sherlock, in the interim had been examining the room finally coming to a stop in front of the window. He looked out for a moment, grunted then turned and went out into the main room. I was still attempting to keep Crystalyn from having full blown hysterics when I heard Sherlock call out "Watson, I need you, quickly!"

James smoothly took over dealing with Crystalyn as I rushed out in the direction of Sherlock's voice. He wasn't in the living room but his voice came again from outside the window, "John! Up here on the roof."

Out the window and up the fire escape I went to find Sherlock kneeling by another body, his bloody hand applying pressure to the man's leg.

"Back in a moment" I said and hustled back down into the flat to gather whatever I could use as impromptu medical supplies.

"Get a hold of Lestrade and get medical support here quick," I barked the order at Bond. "Portier is bleeding out on the roof."

James' response was an expletive but shortly thereafter I heard him talking, presumably to the group at MI6.

I must say that the MI6 folks were efficient. Portier was on his way to a secure medical facility in less than 15 minutes. The thugs were collected. Crystalyn was sedated and taken from the scene. The bodies were also removed expeditiously leaving Sherlock, Bond, Lestrade and I standing in the living room of the flat. Lestrade wasn't too pleased that MI6 had, in effect, cleaned up his crime scene however he did mention to me in an aside that he had orders not to interfere on the grounds of national security. Thank you Mycroft.

As we stood there James had handed me back my earpiece and microphone. I hadn't even seen him scoop them up off the table when we'd left 221B. I put mine back on, Lestrade was still wired and Sherlock put his in his pocket. He had examined both the thugs and the bodies before they'd been removed. He was now pacing, brow furrowed, muttering to himself under his breath.

Suddenly he stopped dead in his tracks and said, "He's near the University of London and there's a T-1 line or fiber optic cable that runs back into their internet backbone from his location."

Bond relayed this to Shirley and I heard her respond, "I'm on it." It was only a minute or two before she was back on the line. "I have six possibilities with connections fast enough to allow him to do what he was doing earlier. Sending coordinates to your phones now.f" She paused for a moment then said, "I'm also downloading a tracking app. Q has been playing around with an experimental subcutaneous tracker. It doesn't have a lot of range but your phones should vibrate when you get close enough to pick it up."

Tanner chimed in as soon as she stopped speaking. "Go get our Quartermaster back 007," he ordered, "and try not to blow up London while you are at it!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The wonders of the internet. I know nothing about the bar/club in question save its location.


	11. Libero

I felt movement. Was I being carried again? No, someone was moving the blanket that had been thrown over me. Something was placed around my leg. What? I tried to move and nothing worked. They’d obviously given me something different this time. A mix of the opiates I was now addicted to and something else in addition. I suspected that I was supposed to be completely unconscious but whatever the second drug was it didn’t seem to be completely working.

“Goodbye Ghost,” Dominic’s Voice said out of the darkness. “I had Rheese give you something different. With luck you won’t even know when things go off.” He chuckled, “of course the powers that be won’t notice this small explosion when the Yard and the Home Office go up in flames. Your set up to hack MI6 was quite masterful. It will keep them too busy to adequately respond even if my team doesn’t succeed in completely cracking that system.” There was a kiss on my forehead followed by a sigh. “I really would have loved to keep you but you’ve changed. I wouldn’t ever be able to really trust you. I promise you, this is all for the best.” There was movement and the sound of a door shutting.

Bloody, buggering fuck! I struggled, fighting against the paralysis, trying to increase my heart rate and burn off whatever it was that Rheese had given me. I was absolutely sure that, despite what he had told Dom, Rheese had meant me to be conscious but paralyzed whenever the bomb I was attached to was set to go off. Damn it. I redoubled my efforts and was rewarded with twitching in my hands. I worked some more and had just managed to get some minor movement back in my arms when the world suddenly greyed out.

The faint sound of gun shots woke me. One, two…three. Small caliber. Two different guns. A crash. Someone had kicked in a door. Shouts and more crashes moving closer. At first I couldn’t make out what they were saying but then I heard “Clear!” followed by a second voice echoing “Clear.” Ah, it sounded like rescue in one form or another had arrived.

I checked my mobility. I had control of my hands and arms and could push up onto my elbows with effort. I wasn’t too sure about the rest but I didn’t want to chance moving my legs for fear of upsetting whatever explosive device I had been attached to. I lay back for the moment and listened to the voices get nearer. I needed to be copacetic at minimum when they got here. There was too much to do if I was going to unravel Dominic’s plan.

The door to my room was kicked open followed by a familiar looking salt and pepper gray haired man holding a standard MET issued Glock. He surveyed the room for threats, spotted me and muttered some sort of swear under his breath before turning to the door while yelling “Watson!”

Now that was a welcome name if the Watson he was yelling for happened to be my brother’s Watson. Where Watson was Sherlock would not be far away and I could use both of them. I looked up at the silver-haired man as he knelt down beside the bed. I attempted a smile. From the look on his face it must have been more of a grimace.

“Don’t move,” he said. “You are attached to a bomb.”

I blinked at him and tried to nod to let him know I understood.

“Coming Lestrade!” came the voice of my brother’s flat mate followed by “Bloody hell! Quentin!”

Oh, that was why he looked familiar. The silver-haired man was Shirley’s boyfriend. I’d only seen him via the CCTV feeds never in person. No that wasn’t quite true. I’d noticed him the day MI6 had been blown up by Silva. He’d been the policeman that Shirley had fainted on. I realized then that my eyes were closed. Crap. I opened them and found that Lestrade had been replaced by Watson who had one hand on my neck taking my pulse while his other was holding a pen light.

“Quentin, look at me. Focus!” he ordered. He shined the light in my eyes. “Do you know what they gave you?”

I took a breath and tried to tell him opiate but it came out sounding more like pit. It was enough.

“One of the opiates?” he asked.

I grunted an affirmative.

“Any idea which one?”

“No.” At least I had managed to enunciate that clearly. “Eths..etic.” Shit. I still wasn’t able to get a multi-syllable word out.

“Laced with an anesthetic too?”

“Uh-huh.”

“One with a paralytic effect judging by your condition,” he added.

“John?” it was Sherlock’s voice from somewhere in the vicinity of the doorway.

“Think you can take care of that?” He gestured toward my feet. “It looks rather similar in design to the one with the pips.” Watson’s voice was very calm. Sherlock had always said that John Watson was the epitome of grace under fire. Looking at him right now I could see why. He was sitting in a room with a ticking time bomb and here he was totally focused on me and my condition.

“Clear everyone out of the building.” That was Sherlock. There was no audible reply but he continued after a pause, “I doubt we have enough time.”

Well that was interesting. Sherlock was wired with communications gear. I tried to focus on Watson. Yes, there it was. One of our small earwigs and a button mic on his collar. Good. That meant Q branch was most likely on the other end as well as the fact that there should be a field agent within reach.

“No Mr. Bond, I do not require any assistance,” Sherlock was being huffy. “John,” he started.

“Not going.” Watson replied cutting him off.

Oh good, 007 was on site. Now if I was lucky he’d have some of the standard field equipment.

There was silence for what I thought was a minute or so but most likely was longer. Sherlock muttered something under his breath then there was snipping sound of wires being cut.

“Got it,” he said succinctly.

I felt Sherlock’s hands on my ankle. He was examining whatever attached the bomb to me. Handcuffs? Now how to communicate what I needed. Speaking obviously wasn’t going to work too well at the present. There had been a game Sherlock and I had played when I was little. One person would try and deduce the other person’s side of a conversation from non-verbal cues. Mycroft had taught it to Sherlock who in turn taught it to me. They had been quite good at it.  Good enough so that even now they could have an entire argument with expressions, body language and only the occasional word. I tried to struggle into a sitting position. Watson started to restrain me then taking a look at my face helped me out by supporting me in a somewhat sitting position.

Sherlock glanced up. He was picking the lock, no it wasn’t handcuffs it was a shackle, and said “What?”

Single words seemed to come out all right so I whined, “Lock?” I used my childhood nickname for him. Hopefully he’d get the message and start translating.

He stopped in mid-motion and focused completely on me.

I stared at the now defused bomb and tried to project fear.

Sherlock looked confused for a moment then suddenly he made the connection, “More bombs,” he stated. “Where?”

I looked around then focused on Lestrade who was standing looking out the doorway into the hall.

“At the Yard,” Sherlock was quick. “Anything more specific?”

I rolled my eyes at him. He was being an idiot. Just what did he think I’d been doing the last few days? I knew Mycroft had received my message about the backups.

“Ah, Idiot,” He said mostly to himself, “It’s in or near the servers.”

Lestrade might have been guarding the door but he was listening to the exchange. I heard him say “Have them clear the building and patch me through to Donnaly with the bomb squad

Now how the hell was I going to communicate about the home office? It was just then that another part of my brain came on line and I realized that MI5’s servers were physically almost directly under Mycroft’s office. Anything big enough to take them out would drop the entire building into the subbasement.

“My…” I blurted.

“Is in Q branch,” Sherlock reassured me, then he got it. “MI5 too?” I nodded. “The bombs will be somewhere near the computer servers,” he seemed to be talking both to me and whomever was on the coms, probably Mycroft among others. “Offsite back-ups?” he asked.

I rolled my eyes at him again. Why would I have hacked the backups just to destroy them? The whole idea was to reconstruct using the doctored backups.

Sherlock got a sour look on his face. Oh yes, Mycroft was on the coms. Sherlock only made that face when Mycroft got the better of him in some series of deductions. He went back to picking the lock on the shackle. It was only a matter of moments and he had it off.

I tried to swing my legs round so I could sit on the edge of the bed. I was mostly successful with Watson’s help. I was getting motor control back quickly, but not quick enough. I was going to need more if I had any hope of protecting MI6 from hack that I knew was going to be unleashed shortly. Shirley and the rest would be too busy defending against what I had set up to catch the secondary attack that I suspected would occur simultaneously. I, however, could manage to protect them and back trace the hackers if, and that was a big if, the computer set up in the next room was still active.

I glanced around again to see if I could get Sherlock to help. He was systematically taking apart the bomb and talking softly into his mic all the while. No, I couldn’t interrupt him. He was detailing the construction and giving instructions on how to defuse the other bombs when they found them. Watson was my best chance to communicate then.

“Bnd” I managed to tell him.

Watson looked at me for a moment then said, “James, get in here. Quentin seems to want you for something.”

It seemed like only a moment or two before 007 came walking in the door. He somehow still managed to look stylish even with bruised knuckles, a blood stain on his cuff and a smear of something unidentified across his jaw. He came to a stop far enough back so I wouldn’t have to strain to look up at him. Rats. I needed him closer, close enough to touch. I attempted to reach out my hands for him. There was a wave of dizziness and I had to close my eyes for a moment. Crap.

When I managed to open them again Watson had my head between my knees and was talking to James. 

“No idea. He’s been systematically trying to get up since we detached him from that bomb.”

I wiggled a bit and tried to sit up again.

“Slowly,” John admonished me, “stop if you feel dizzy.”

I managed to get myself sitting upright leaning a bit on Watson and made a grab in James direction again. This time it worked. James went down on one knee in front of me and grabbed my flailing hand in his. If it hadn’t been such a serious situation I’d have laughed and insisted that someone take a picture. The great 007 down on one knee in classic proposal position in front of me!

I started tapping. All our agents knew Morse code since we sometimes used it on missions. _Computer_ I tapped out on his wrist.

James looked startled then said, “Yes there is a computer in the next room.”

_Functional_

“It looks like it’s still up and running. They were relying on the bomb to take out the evidence.” Bond paused and looked closely at me.

I took the opportunity to tap out _E patch._

Bond’s eyes widened “Really?”

He was genuinely surprised. What, did he think only field agents had the impulse to put their lives on the line by doing something risky in the hopes of completing the mission?

“Yes, I have some,” Bond continued.

“What’s an E-patch?” Watson asked at the same time.

Crap. Watson was good enough to follow the Morse code. Once he knew what I was planning I was sure he would object vehemently. I knew Bond would understand but would Watson? He’d been a soldier so there was a chance.

“A drug cocktail, primarily caffeine and adrenaline, used to give a short burst of energy in an emergency situation. Lasts up to 30 minutes. Allows a last ditch effort for getting out of a jam,” Bond explained then added, “Not advisable to use more than two at once or more than three sequentially.”

Oh ho. That sounded like the voice of experience from Bond. I’d need to go over the after action reports a bit more carefully. Since I was thinking about side effects the next question came as a complete surprise.

“Why?” asked Watson.

_Protect servers, track hack_. I tapped it on Watson’s arm rather than on Bond’s.

“It’s dangerous,” Watson stated flatly. “It could kill you given we don’t know what exactly is in your system.”

“If the labels on these bottles are correct,” Lestrade said suddenly from somewhere in the vicinity of the doorway, “It’s probably just as dangerous as the cocaine solution the bastards gave him earlier.”

“Uh huh,” I grunted in agreement. It was a pain trying to win an argument when you were limited to monosyllables, grunts and Morse code.

Once again John Watson surprised me. “OK,” he said, “but I’ll be monitoring you and if there is anything I deem to be a problem the patch comes off immediately!”

I nodded my assent.

Bond looked thoughtful, “Let’s move him first then apply the patch. I suspect he’s going to need every minute.” With that he scooped me up bridal style and headed for the other room.

In short order I was seated in front of the computer waiting for the drugs to kick in. Watson stood behind me with his fingers lightly on my carotid artery monitoring my pulse. I could feel that his entire attention was focused on me. I flexed my fingers and started typing.

Less than a minute later I heard Bond explain to Shirley, “No, that’s not an attack. That’s Q. It looks like he’s implementing something he’s labeled _Fortress Protocol_.”

Fortress Protocol was a series of programs and hardware I’d been developing to protect MI6 by putting a virtual wall between our servers and the outside. Shirley knew the rough outlines. It was still an alpha version and had only limited testing. The drawback was that it cut the servers off electronically and physically from the all nonessential computers both inside and outside the complex. The advantage was that the wall had a whole set of tricks and traps designed to tag anyone foolish enough to attempt to hack the wall allowing us to trace the source of the attack. It also currently needed a single code word, typed into a prompt on the main terminal in operations, to dismantle the protections. Eventually, I had planned to implement a double redundancy unlock sequence. Oh well. No time for that now. It would either succeed or fail. Nothing like a trial by fire to test the integrity of the system. I typed the activation code.

Apparently that action triggered some physiological response because I felt Dr. Watson rip the patch off my collarbone just below my neck. Bloody hell. I’d not told anyone the unlock code. I shook off Watson’s hand and made a lunge at Bond who was standing beside my chair. Luckily he caught me before I went face first onto the cement floor.

I concentrated and managed to get a complete sentence out, “Key word is Skyfall.” From the look on Bond’s face I knew I’d overstepped. My vision was greying out on me. Oh well, if I survived I’d apologize.

******

I came back to consciousness to a faint antiseptic smell, a low pitched regular beeping noise and someone holding my hand. I had vague recollections of voices, pain and for some odd reason violin music but nothing definitive or concrete. The beeping noise increased in pace. Ah, the sound was a heart rate monitor. The hand holding mine was joined by a finger tracing circles on my wrist.

“You are safe Q.” Eve’s voice was calm and soothing. “You are in MI6 medical. It’s Tuesday the 17th.” I deduced from the tone and cadence of her deliver that she’d imparted this information multiple times before. If my calculations were correct I’d been out for four days.

I opened my eyes. She was standing looking down at me, concern all over her face.

“You back with us?” she asked.

I tried to respond but realized that my mouth felt like the Sahara had taken up residence inside it. Eve, realizing my dilemma, gave me some water. Ambrosia.

“Report?” I asked her hopefully.

She snorted, “You know better than that. You don’t get any information until after debrief which, by the way, M wants as soon as you are able.”

I widened my eyes giving her my best puppy dog look and asked “Gossip?”

She smiled. “Now that’s a different matter.” She adjusted the bed so I was half sitting then pulled up a chair and got comfortable. This ought to be good.

“It looks like Fred from accounting has won the office pool again,” she started off.

I raised an eyebrow.

“It was how many hours it would take you to attempt to start working again. Asking for a report counts I think.”

I snorted and reached for the water. She held it for me.

“There is a vigorous debate going on amongst the medical staff as to whether your eldest brother, Tanner or Bond has the best reading voice. Bond and Tanner have the edge but I think that is because your brother insisted on reading to you in Latin.”

Oh. Oh my. Mycroft hadn’t read to me in Latin since I was 10 and sick with chicken pox.  
Moneypenny didn’t seem to notice my surprise and continued, “I think Tanner is going to win because the medical staff seems to be more inclined to Shakespeare than Byron.”

Bond read Victorian poetry to me? Oh god. Which ones?

As I was pondering this Eve kept on, “There is a small contingent though that thinks Sherlock on the violin is much better than all of the readers combined.”

“I remember the violin,” I admitted.

“It was quite impressive. He’s very talented.” Eve smiled. “Oh and M is trying to figure out what it would take to convince Dr. Watson to work for us in medical. Any help on that front would be much appreciated.” She looked at me hopefully.

“Why?” I asked.

“Well he was instrumental in putting you back together. He’s been in charge of your case per your brothers’ insistence. However what really made M so keen was he managed to keep 006 in medical for two days straight.”

I couldn’t help myself. I gaped at her. Alec, 006, was just as notorious as Bond for refusing medical attention in the first place and escaping as soon as possible to lick his wounds in solitary seclusion.

“I know, I know!” Eve was laughing at my expression. “I didn’t believe it either until I saw the surveillance tape. Alec was attempting to sneak out and met Dr. Watson in the hall. They had a conversation and Alec went back to bed as meek as you please. We don’t know what was said because both of them were aware of the camera and turned so you couldn’t lip read.”

Now wasn’t that interesting. I might have to install some of my micro-mini cameras in the hall leading to medical. I closed my eyes as I tried to mentally figure out where to put them so that they’d be unobtrusive. My thoughts started to drift and I opened my eyes again. I was finding it hard to keep them open.

“Where is everyone?” I asked her in an attempt to keep myself awake. There must be a reason why she was here and not anyone else. I suspected that she was not only sitting with an invalid but also acting as body guard. Not that she’d ever admit to that. But then again, maybe not. She hadn’t let go of my hand for more than a moment the entire time I’d been awake.

“Watson is catching some well-deserved rest down the hall. Bond and Sherlock are chasing down loose ends and I suspect your older brother is back running the government behind the scenes,” was her reply. “M’s in his office and R is running Q branch. You don’t need to worry, we’ve got it all under control,” she reassured me in a soothing voice squeezing my hand slightly.

I didn’t bother to reply. I was just too tired. As long as she was holding my hand I knew I was safe. I slept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter to go. An Epilogue of sorts.


	12. Vengeance

Mint finally reported back to me several days after Quentin's rescue. I'd tasked him early on to look after Quentin. He'd done a good job of it. He'd managed to observe most of the activities in Dominic Greene's lair and then infiltrated MI6 medical. What he related made me livid. Quentin had not only been badly mistreated but he'd almost died at least twice after his rescue. Mint's description of the detox process was horrific. Thank heavens for Dr. Watson. That man was an absolute marvel.

When he finished reporting Mint disappeared in a puff of agitated pixie dust. He'd never seen me this mad before so I didn't blame him. Sapphire, who had been around longer, just looked at me sadly shaking her head. She knew that when I was this upset I had a tendency to take drastic action and drastic action was just what I was contemplating. To hell with the statute of secrecy, a message had to be sent. No one, and I meant absolutely no one, had the right to mess with one of mine that way. There was no way I was going to let that bloody wanker Greene and his sidekick Rheese Fredricks get away with what they had done. Even if I had to burn an identity to do so, so be it, vengeance would be meted out.

Half an hour of pacing later I had a plan. Art, my punk persona, was already on the MI5 payroll as an informant. I rummaged around in my box for a specific phone and popped in the battery. With Sapphire's help in mudding the signal location I sent a message to my handler requesting a face-to-face. The wording was such that I knew it would end up on Mycroft Holmes' desk especially since I had specified I would only meet with the blond who carried the Ghost from the basement.

I didn't expect an immediate response so in the interim I went about preparing. I first put in all my piercings then pulled on my skin tight jeans and shrugged into my ratty union jack t-shirt. I dug the Doc Martins out of the back of the wardrobe and then attacked my hair. A bit of product and I was ready to apply the bright green streaks I habitually wore with this get up. An hour or so of walking around the seedier side of London would let the tats rise up to full visibility on my skin.

By the time I was dressed Mint was back. I asked him to go round up a bunch of his kin folk and fog the CCTV cameras all over London. The fey, when properly motivated, could generate an electromagnetic like field that played royal havoc with electronics. If they got really pissed they could seriously fry even ECM hardened equipment. It took a lot of energy so I'd also equipped a number of them with aluminum multi tools. Cutting wires was often easier and something they found fun. In a half an hour or so the poor CCTV camera repair crews would be up to their ears in malfunction tickets. Hopefully it would also confuse the good spooks at MI5 and 6 to the point that they wouldn't spot me.

Dressed, coiffed with plans in place, Sapphire and I set out. About an hour into our ramble I was surprised by the phone. A few back and forth texts and a meet was set up in an alley I'd used for face-to-face contact before. I wouldn't have been able to do it safely without Sapphire's help in rerouting the phone signals. Once the protocols were in place I popped the battery out of the phone and sent her off to suss out with whatever the nice folks at Q branch had put in the alley and its environs.

I made it to the general vicinity about thirty minutes early. Sapphire had returned with a good idea of all the cameras in the alley and surrounding streets. It was nice that none happened to be ECM hardened. I was also surprised that I hadn't spotted any human assets watching. They were relying solely on Bond and the electronics then. Interesting. I spotted Bond in a bake shop with a good view of the alley. That would work nicely. I gave Sapphire the nod to start fudging the cameras and meandered over.

I ordered Earl Grey in a take away cup then passed directly behind where Bond was sitting. "Come along china." I pitched my voice low enough so that only Bond would hear me. That, the accent and the scent of the tea should get his attention. It did. I sauntered out the door and sure enough I had a certain 00 agent on my tail.

I lead him around a bit then down into the tube. From there it was a simple matter to slip into the access tunnels where I let him catch up to me. He started to speak but before he could I held my finger to my lips in the time honored gesture for silence. He complied and followed me deeper into the tunnels. It was only a five minute walk to a portion of an abandoned tube tunnel that the fey had warded against all electronic eves dropping. It had advantages that it was lit and we could see each other. It was there I stopped and looked at him.

"What do you have?" he asked without preamble.

"Word is the big manhole cover wan' the green Ethan." Oh boy. I needed to calm down. My Art persona spoke with a broad cockney accent and tended to be well-nigh incomprehensible at times especially when I was excited or upset. I shouldn't have worried. 007 seemed to follow the slang just fine.

"You know where he is?"

"What'cha gonna do to 'im?" I asked rather than replying directly. I was careful to let my body language indicate that I was mad at Mr. Greene.

"Why do you want to know?"

What to say to make sure that Bond would utilize his license to kill? Not that he'd tell me directly but I wanted to make sure that Mr. Greene would not survive to be placed in custody. I stated. "I saw the Ghost when you carried 'im out. Greene's a bit of a Fester and his light-o-luv is big with the Vera Lynn. For what they done they don' deserve the ginger."

"Why do you care?"

"I owe the Ghost and I owe them that's been 'armed." I wasn't lying. Quentin had provided me, through intermediaries, with quite a few of my electronic covers over the years. In addition there was enough that Greene had done against me and mine both directly and indirectly to earn him a death sentence three times over.

The look on Bond's face was assessing. Finally he said, "Give me the address. They won't bother anyone again, I guarantee it."

Well that was as good as I was going to get and I told him the address of Mr. Greene's latest hidey hole. Bond paused a moment then asked, "How recent is this?"

"Yesterday I saw 'is at the near and followed him round to 'is cat." I lied, though the address I had courtesy of Mint's friends was good as of at least an hour ago.

Bond looked like he was going to slip me some bills in the time honored payoff of an informant. Now that wouldn't do at all. He could use it to plant a tracker on me. I waved him off. "Don' need the bread," I told him. "Tell 'im this one's on me." Then just because I couldn't resist a dramatic gesture I drew myself up to attention and saluted Bond with all military propriety. That was Sapphire's cue to blank out all the lights with her magic. I took off but I paused just as I was up at the top of an emergency ladder and spoke again "Good luck Commander Bond" I said in my normal voice without any accent as I exited.

Late that evening Sapphire reported back. She had followed Bond and watched to the bloody bleeding end, literally. Mr. Fredericks had decided to fight with the obvious results when facing James Bond. Mr. Greene had tried to surrender. He had been informed in no uncertain terms just before his demise exactly why his surrender was not acceptable. Bond had also recovered a treasure trove of intelligence on the Verdigris cartel that would most likely keep him from any serious repercussions about going off mission. That was good. I wouldn't have to intervene on his account then.

In the meantime Mint had checked in on Quentin who was chafing at his enforced stay in MI6 medical and wanting to get back into Q branch. I wondered idly how long they would be able to keep him there. Mint had also looked in on Sherlock and Mycroft. They were studiously not chasing my Art persona. I knew however that one or the other of them would get curious enough to do so eventually but I'd cross that bridge when I got to it. Once again my three geniuses were safe even if one was a little worse for wear. I could live with that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mr. Kirkland ended up tying up most all the loose ends nicely for me. Just for clarity the cockney rhyming slang used by Art (once again thank heavens for the internet) is as follows:
> 
> Cat = cat & mouse = house  
> China = china plate = mate  
> Ethan = Ethan Hunt = C**t  
> Fester = uncle fester = child molester  
> Ginger = ginger ale = jail  
> Manhole = manhole cover = brother  
> Near = near & far = bar/pub  
> Vera Lynn = heroin
> 
> So now gentle readers we are again at the end of another fan fiction. I hope you enjoyed it. I must thank my alpha reader Guy who not only read it in hard copy but asked cogent questions and provided much needed encouragement. I also should thank Kenoria for introducing me to Hetalia and listening to my plot ramblings more than anyone should reasonably be expected to do so.
> 
> As has become my tradition (with apologies to The Bard):
> 
> If this writer has offended,  
> Think but this and all is mended.  
> That you have but tarried here,  
> While each chapter did appear,  
> And these words upon this theme,  
> Are of no import, only my dream.
> 
> It has been an honor to share my dream with you.
> 
> K2N2


End file.
